
Book ' ]A)4'5 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST 



BOOKS BY W. D. WEATHERFORD 



** Fundamental Religious Principles in 

Browning's Poetry." $i.00. 
SMITH & LAMAR, Nashville, Tennessee. 



Negro Life in the South." 75 cents. 
Y. M. C. A. PRESS, New York, 



INTRODUCING MEN 
TO CHRIST 



FUNDAMENTAL STUDIES 



BY 



W. D. WEATHERFORD, Ph.D. 

Author of ^^Fundamental Religiotcs Principles in Brownif^*s Poetry^ 
and " Negro Life in the South" 



NASHVILLE, TENN.; DALLAS, TEX. 

PUBLISHING HOUSE OF THE M. E. CHURCH, SOUTH 

SMITH & LAMAR, AGENTS 

19TI 






COPYRIGHT, igil 
BY 

Smith & Lamar 



1^ 



©CU286960 



Dedicated to those Epworth Leaguers who, true to their name, 

are sharing their religious experience with 

their daily associates. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction 1 1 

STUDY I. Entrance into Christian Life 15-29 

1. What Does It Mean to Be a Christian? 16 

2. Forgiveness 18 

3. Repentance 20 

4. Faith 22 

5. Association 24 

6. Confession 26 

7. Service 28 

STUDY 11. What Really Happens When a Man Becomes 

A Christian 31-45 

1. Conversion 32 

2. Sense of Estrangement Removed 34 

3. Change from a Self-Centered to a God-Centered Life... 36 

4. A New Appreciation of the Self 38 

5. Unification of Personality 40 

6. A New Spirit of Kindliness toward Men 42 

7. A New Center of Loyalty 44 

STUDY III. The Distinctive Message of Christianity 47-61 

1. The God of the Non-Christian Religions 48 

2. The God of the Non-Christian Religions (Continued).. 50 

3. Valuation of Man in the Non-Christian Religions 52 

4. Conception of Sin in the Non-Christian Religions 54 

5. Standards of Morality in the Non-Christian Religions.. 56 

6. Conception of Salvation in Non-Christian Religions 58 

7. Do the Non-Christian Religions Satisfy? 60 

STUDY IV. The Distinctive Message of Christianity (Con- 
tinued) 63-77 

1. The Christian's Conception of God 64 

2. Who Is Jesus Christ ? 66 

3. Who Is Man? 68 

4. What Is Sin ? 70 

5. Does Christianity Offer a Final Standard of Morals?.... 72 

6. What Is Salvation ? 74 

7. Does the Christian Life Satisfy the Human Soul? 76 

(7) 



8 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

STUDY V. Christ's Method of Extending the Kingdom . . . 79-93 

1. Introduced into a Value through Testimony 80 

2. Christ Expected Men to Report Their Experience to 

Others 82 

3. Testimony the Method of the Early Churches in Ex- 

tending the Kingdom 84 

4. Testimony through the Life 86 

5. Is Personal Testimony Necessary? 88 

6. The Nature of Our Testimony 90 

7. Is Personal Testimony Effective ? 92 

STUDY VI. Why Men Neglect to Bear Personal Testi- 
mony 95-109 

1. We Shrink from All Personal Conversation 96 

2. We Are Lacking in Knowledge 98 

3. Fear Men Will Resent Our Testimony 100 

4. Personal Testimony Reveals Weakness of the Witness. .. 102 

5. We Want to Serve in the Easiest Way 104 

6. We Do Not Realize the Desperate Need of Men 106 

7. Our Relation to Christ Is Not Such as to Beget a Sense 

of Message 108 

STUDY VII. How to Awaken the Indifferent and Self- 

Satisfied 111-125 

1. Causes of Indifference 112 

2. The Contagion of Character 114 

3. Help the Indifferent Man to Realize the Value of His 

Own Personality 116 

4. Character Determined by the Things to Which We Give 

Attention 118 

5. Ask the Indifferent Man to Face the Facts 120 

6. Meet the Excuses "No Time" and "Don't Feel Like It".. 122 

7. The Sin of the Self-Satlsfied 1124 

STUDY VIII. How TO Help the Man Whose Faith Is Un- 
settled 127-141 

1. Present-Day Form of Unrest 128 

2. Our Attitude toward the Man of Unsettled Faith 130 

3. How Much Must One Believe before He Can Begin the 

Christian Life ? 132 

4. The Attitude of the Truth Seeker 134 

5. Be Constructive in Dealing with Unsettled Faith 136 

6. Is Religion a Reality? 138 

7. Is Religion a Reality ? (Continued) 140 



CONTENTS. 9 

PAGE 

STUDY IX. Fundamentals of the Christian Faith I43-I57 

1. Is Belief in an Intelligent First Cause (God) Consistent 

with Scientific Truth ? 144 

2. Can We Believe in a Good God ? 146 

3. Helping the Man Troubled about God's Personality 148 

4. Helping the Man Troubled about God's Personality 

(Continued) 150 

5. Can God Speak to Men ? 152 

6. What Are the Conditions of Receiving God's Message ? . . 154 

7. What Is the Bible? 156 

STUDY X. Helping Men Sol\te Difficulties about Christ 159-173 

1. Christ the Perfect Man 160 

2. Christ's Consciousness of Sonship , 162 

3. Was Christ an Impostor, a Crazy Man, or What He 

Thought Himself to Be ? 164 

4. Is the Incarnation Idea Inconsistent with Reason? 166 

5. Jesus's Consciousness as the Giver of Life 168 

6. Shall We Cultivate the Larger Life ? 170 

7. Summary 172 

Bibliography 174-176 



INTRODUCTION. 

There is a very great need to-day that men shall be 
brought to feel that religion is not a thing apart, that it is 
knit up with the ordinary processes of our lives. We need 
to see that being religious is not having some vague, mysti- 
cal experience, but living a life of real friendship. Perhaps 
as never before men are coming to realize that Christian 
life is not abnormal, but the most completely normal. In 
this life we use the same powers of personality which we 
use in our ordinary friendships, the sole difference being 
that in this God friendship we are associated with a perfect 
and full personality; while in all other friendships we are 
associated with incomplete and partial persons like our- 
selves. This makes a difference in the intensity and mean- 
ing of our friendship, but no difference as to kind. 

Further, there is a need to quiet the minds of some who 
seem to think psychology is putting God out of the work- 
ings of the human soul. A few year ago, when evolution 
was in the enthusiastic flush of a new discovery, many of its 
advocates and still more of the Christian people thought it 
was destined to explain away God's working in the universe 
of physical nature. But we have long since ceased to feel 
that evolution is opposed to religion. It claims to be only a 
theory of the method of creation; and if it can and does 
reveal to us the method by which God works, we may well 
rejoice in this new light, which is essentially religious. 

Psychology is just now beginning to make a serious study 
of the phenomena of religio,us experience; and as we come 
to understand the psychic changes which go on at conver- 
sion, some seem to fear that God's relation to the inner ex- 
periences of man will be explained away. On the con- 
trary, I am convinced that we shall soon come to see that 
psychology is simply showing us the manner in which God 

(II) 



12 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 

moves upon a human spirit, even as science helped us to 
see how he moved in the realm of the physical. We there- 
fore have nothing to fear ultimately from a careful study of 
the psychic laws of religious experience. Only there is need 
to help men see this, lest on the one hand some may repudi- 
ate psychology, and on the other some may repudiate re- 
ligion. 

In the third place, there is need that men shall recognize 
that there are fundamental laws for spreading the Gospel. 
One of these fundamental laws is testimony. The Church 
and religious workers have far too long neglected this form 
of Christian activity. 

There needs to be a group of men and women in every 
community who have gotten clear conceptions of what it is 
to be a Christian, how this fact relates itself to other life, 
upon what facts Christian experience is based, and whether 
or not the whole matter is reasonable and normal. Such per- 
sons by personal dealings with others may lead the strongest 
and best of their communities into fellowship with Christ. 

This little volume being purely practical in purpose, can 
in only a very brief and inadequate way set forth some of 
these fundamental truths^ in the hope that some who are in 
doubt may be strengthened ; that some who have not before 
done so may find expression for their religious experiences ; 
and that all who thus see moie clearly the meaning of their 
experience may through personal testimony lead others into 
fellowship with Christ. 

My ten years of travel and work with college men have 
led me to the deliberate conclusion that the most real facts 
of to-day are the awful ravages of sin, and the consequent 
need of mfcn, the uncertainty on the part of many as to how 
men can get freedom from sin, and the absolute truth of the 
fact, which any one may verify, that Christ can save and 
make free. 

I wish to acknowledge my obligations to Mr. A. J. Elliott 
and Mr. Ray H. Legate for many helpful suggestions, and 



INTRODUCTION. 



13 



to Mr. W. H. Morgan for his services in correction of the 
manuscript. I ought also to acknowledge my deep indebted- 
ness to the Bible study courses of Dr. Edward I. Bosworth 
for much of the inspiration of this book. 

If this little volume leads even a few' to accept the Christ 
friendship as a life program; if it enlightens and strengthens 
the faith of some; if it encourages even a small number to 
begin reporting their religious experiences to others, thus 
leading them into the Christian life; above all, if it helps 
only a few to see how truly normal, how simple, how beau- 
tiful, and how wonderfully impelling is this friendship of 
the Christ, I shall be deeply grateful to those who called it 
forth. 

Nashville, Tenn., December 31, 1910. 



STUDY I. 
Entrance into Christian Life. 



i6 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY I. ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

"And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true 
God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." (John 
xvii. 3.) 

"Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have 
eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye 
will not come to me, that ye may have life." (John v. 39, 40-) 



PART I. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A CHRISTIAN? 

Perhaps the greatest religious need of our time is that we 
shall get away from the false conceptions of what it means 
to be a Christian. Not a few people still hold to the idea 
that believing certain things makes one a follower of Christ. 
Every one must recognize that one's belief vitally afifects 
one's life, hence no one can afford to be careless about what 
he believes; but no amount of intellectual assent to truths of 
whatever order will make one a Christian. The Pharisees 
believed that a careful reading and memorizing of Scripture, 
a punctilious keeping of the law, a slavish following of the 
traditions would bring eternal life. Christ bluntly sets 
aside any such hope. 

Others think that being a Christian means the experienc- 
ing of ecstatic feelings of joy and peace. No one can doubt 
that religious life brings both peace and joy, and at times 
these feelings burst forth into ecstasy; but the waiting for 
such a feeling to come has kept many a person from enter- 
ing the realm of the Christian life. In all of Christ's teach- 
ings he does not prescribe any certain type of feelings the 
experiencing of which shall be the condition of becoming a 
disciple of his. 

A third class of people hold that Christian experience is 
simply a high type of moral life. Matthew Arnold's defini- 



ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 17 

tion of religion as "morality touched with emotion" has 
found many sympathizers. Christian experience cannot be 
divorced from moral life, but it is deeper than simple moral- 
ity. Indeed, it is the mainspring of our truest and surest 
morality. 

What, then, is it to be a Christian? Christ put it tersely 
when he said it was to know God and his messenger Jesus 
Christ. To be a Christian is to be a friend of God as he is 
revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. One must not stop 
with the searching of the Scripture, but through it must 
pass on to a knowledge and fellowship with Christ. One 
must expect to have such feelings and only such as one 
would have in the presence of a great and true friend. And 
in view of this fellowship with Christ, one must act as is 
becoming in the presence of this perfect Friend. For such 
a morality the Christ friendship furnishes the power. 

Does the precept run "Believe in good, 

In justice, truth, now understood 

For the first time ?" — or, "Believe in me, 

Who lived and died, yet essentially 

Am Lord of life?" Whoever can take 

The same to his heart and for mere love's sake 

Conceive of the love — that man obtains 

A new truth; no conviction gains 

Of an old one only, made intense 

By a fresh appeal to his faded sense. 

— Browning's "Christian Eve." 
2 



l8 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY I. ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

"Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found ; call ye upon him while 
he is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous 
man his thoughts ; and let him return unto Jehovah, and he will have 
mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." 
(Isa. Iv. 6, 7.) 

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the 
truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and right- 
eous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteous- 
ness." (i John i. 8, 9.) 



PART 2. STEPS IN ENTERING THIS FRIENDSHIP. 
(a) Forgiveness. 

If, as our first study set forth, to be a Christian means to 
be on terms of friendship with the God whom Christ came 
to make known, then the foremost question for every man 
is, how he may enter this friendship. What are the conditions 
of coming into friendly relations with this Father God? 

The first condition of any true friendship is that all bar- 
riers separating the two persons shall be removed. Let us 
suppose that you and I are so related to each other that a 
friendship is not only desirable but possible. Let us sup- 
pose that I get sick and you visit me, or that I am in need 
and you help me, or that I am lonely and you comfort me. 
Let us suppose that when the crisis is past I show no appre- 
ciation of your kindness; that I pass it by and never indi- 
cate the least gratitude. Or let us suppose (a perfectly 
possible thing) that I am not only silent about your kind- 
ness, but I deliberately go out and defame your name. In 
either case there is a barrier raised between you and me. 
Until that barrier of misunderstanding is removed, there can 
be no friendship. 

If you are a true soul you will still continue to love me, 



ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 



19 



but you cannot approve my actions. How can I get back into 
your approving friendship? There is just one way. When 
I come to reaHze that I have done you a wrong, that I have 
been unfair, I will, like a man, come back to you and ask your 
forgiveness. If you are genuine, and if you know or have 
reason to believe that I am in earnest, I will get forgiveness — 
that is, the barrier will be removed and a real friendship will 
be possible. 

Our Christlike God has done everything possible to give us 
larger life. He has given us Christian homes, Christian 
Churches, Christian schools — above all, he has given us Jesus 
Christ ; and yet many of us have been absolutely indifferent, 
or perhaps we have committed overt acts of sin. In either 
case we have greatly grieved the heart of our Father God. 
He loves us, but he cannot approve of our life. How can 
we get back into his approving love ? By coming to him in 
simple, manly fashion, and asking him to forgive us our in- 
difference and sin. All true men and women will ask for- 
giveness when they know they have wronged a friend. Will 
we be fair-minded enough to do the same with God ? 

Can it be true, the grace he is declaring? 
O let us trust him, for his words are fair! 
Mian, what is this, and why art thou despairing? 
God shall forgive thee all but thy despair. 

—Myers's "St. Paul" 



20 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY I. ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

"Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before 
the high God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with 
calves a year old ? will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, or 
with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? shall I give my firstborn for my 
transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? He hath 
showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require 
of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly 
with thy God." (Mic. vi. 6-8.) 



PART 3- STEPS IN ENTERING THIS FRIENDSHIP 

(Continued). 
(b) Repentance. 

Perhaps some student is still unsatisfied about the condi- 
tion of asking" this forgiveness. He is looking for some up- 
heaval of the emotions to warn him that he must ask for for- 
giveness. We have so long been schooled in the thought of 
emotionalism that we fear to trust our good judgment and 
the dictates of our conscience telling us that we are wrong 
and that we ought to get right. If we have sinned, it is the 
God in us (we call it conscience) that tells us so; and if 
we know that we ought to get right, it is our God-given 
judgment that seeks to direct. We can trust these, re- 
gardless of what our feelings are or are not. 

I spoke once at the University of Tennessee on the social 
meaning of a man's sin. W — , the captain of the football 
team and the President of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, told me next day that after the address one of his 
teamhmates had come into his room and, with tears in his 
eyes and signs of deep emotion, had told W — he had been un- 
fair toward him ; that he had tried to defeat him for the cap- 



ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 2I 

taincy, etc., and wanted to ask his forgiveness. This man 
was affected with a deep emotion ; but another man with a 
different temperament might have committed the same sin, 
asked the same forgiveness with equal sincerity and genu- 
ineness, but with less or almost no emotion. 

The final test is not how we feel but what we think of our 
wrong, and what we will do about it. The recognition that 
we are wrong, the deliberate turning away from the wrong 
because our hearts despise it, and the determination to do 
right — that is the real condition of receiving God's forgive- 
ness. It is technically called repentance. 

Well, let me sin, but not with my consenting; 

Well, let me die, but willing to be whole ; 
Never, O, Christ — so stay me from relenting, 

There shall be truce betwixt my flesh and soul. 

—Myers's "St. Paul." 



22 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY I. ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on 
thee; because he trusteth in thee." (Isa. xxvi. 3.) 

"And the centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy 
that thou shouldest come under my roof; but only say the word, and 
my servant shall be healed. . . . And when Jesus heard it, he 
marveled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, 
I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. (Matt. viii. 8, 10.) 

"Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, Would ye also go away? 
Simon Peter answered him. Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast 
the words of eternal life. And we have believed and know that thou 
art the Holy One of God." (John vi. 67-69.) 



PART 4. STEPS IN ENTERING THIS FRIENDSHIP 

(Continued). 
(c) Faith. 

If two people wish to be friends, they must freely and 
fully yield themselves to each other. Trust is the foundation 
stone of friendship. Two people cannot be friends who 
constantly suspect each other. Just as rapidly as their 
knowledge of each other justifies, they must increasingly 
trust each the other. A college president has said that the 
man who goes through college and in his four years has not 
found one person into the deep of whose soul he can look 
and say, "O soul, I am thine," and hear the answer back, 
"Yea, soul, and I am thine," has missed the purpose of his 
college career. That finest intercourse of soul with soul 
which kindles character is based on trust, confidence, faith. 

God has endeavored through all the ages so to reveal him- 
self to us that we will trust him. The beauty and strength 
of character revealed in Jesus Christ must of necessity draw 
out from every attentive soul a growing trust. 



ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 



23 



Faith, then, is the dehberate trust in and the active sur- 
render of one's self to a person whose character is such as to 
command the soul. It is by the kindling power of this trust- 
ful relationship that a man grows into likeness with the 
character in whom he puts his trust. To be a Qiristian one 
must increasingly surrender himself to the Father God as he 
has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. 

Personal Thought: Have you ever found yourself wonder- 
ing whether Christian life robs you of the larger things? 
Can God be trusted to deal fairly with us ? If so, does it help 
our friendship with himi to doubt him continually ? 



24 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY I. ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

*Tor where two or three are gathered together in my name, there 
am I in the midst of them." (Matt, xviii. 20.) 

''He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that 
loveth me : and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I 
will love him, and will manifest myself unto him. . . . Jesus 
answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my 
word : and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, 
and make our abode with him." (John xiv. 21, 23.) 



PART 5. STEPS IN ENTERING THIS FRIENDSHIP 

(Continued). 

(d) Association. 

Friendship is a communion of two souls, based on a har- 
mony in the fundamental ideals of life. Without this har- 
mony of ideals there can be no real friendship. If you are 
honest and I am a thief, we cannot be real friends. There 
is no harmony of ideals. 

How, then, can you and I grow into a friendship if our 
ideals are different ? We will drop in to see each other day 
by day. In an open-minded, kindly spirit we will talk over 
— sometimes casually, sometimes more seriously — ^the things 
in which we are interested. We will talk about football, fra- 
ternities, social life, culture, religion. Little by little I come 
to see what your attitude toward these things is, and you 
come to see mine. With both of us in a kindly and fair- 
minded attitude, the better things of your life will appeal 
to me and the better things of my life will appeal to you. 
Little by little the meaner things in each life will drop away, 
and we will come together into a real harmony of fundament- 
al ideals. This is the inevitable result of a kindly and open- 



ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 25 

minded association. It cannot possibly be otherwise. To 
put one's self into the presence of another does not necessarily 
mean physical proximity. One may put himself into the 
presence of another through letters, through the study of 
his writings, or through the reports of experience which 
others have had with this person. 

If we want to be friends of Jesus Christ, we will go to him 
day by day in the kindly and open-minded spirit. We will 
sit down in his presence and find w^hat he thinks of men, 
what he thinks of God, of sin, of joy, of sorrow. Happily 
we can find what Christ's attitude is toward these funda- 
mental facts of life by reading his words in the Bible. This 
is what gives such tremendous importance to daily Bible 
study. It is our best way of keeping ourselves continually 
in the presence of Christ's attitude toward life. 

Now, if we are open-minded as we put ourselves in the 
presence of these fundamental ideals of Christ's life, we will 
little by little be drawn up into these same ideals. "And I, 
if I be lifted up, . . . will draw all men unto me." This 
is the natural and inevitable process. We do not do it; it 
does itself. 

I cannot grow in your friendship if I go off to China, 
never write to you, never hear from you, never think of you. 
The law of a growing friendship is association ; not physical 
proximity, but living in the presence of the spirit of your 
life, the interchange of thought and ideals. If I am to 
grow in the friendship of God and Christ, it will be neces- 
sary for me to put myself constantly into their presence, and 
day by day I will be transformed into the same image. 

"Speak to him thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit can meet — 
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." 



26 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY I. ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

"But what saith it ? The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in 
thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach: because if 
thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in 
thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved: 
for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the 
mouth confession is made unto salvation." (Rom. x. 8-10.) 

"And I say unto you, Every one who shall confess me before men, 
him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God: 
but he that denieth me in the presence of men shall be denied in the 
presence of the angels of God." (Luke xii. 8, 9.) 



PART 6. STEPS IN ENTERING THIS FRIENDSHIP 

(Continued). 

(e) Confession. 

One of the laws of growth in friendship is expression. 
'That which is covered and unexpressed must die" is not 
only the dictum of psychology but also of every man's prac- 
tical experience. If I wish to get free from a temptation 
I do not continue to say to it, "I will forget you," for each 
time I say that the very expression makes the temptation 
clearer and more definite in my mind. The psychological 
way of fighting a temptation is to transfer our thought to 
some other subject which is powerful enough to absorb us, 
thus helping us to forget the evil, to cover it up and let it die. 

Herein lies one of the supreme values of Christianity: 
it gives us the supreme object of the world on which we can 
center our thought — even Jesus Christ. The best Way of 
fighting temptation is to center our thought on the matchless 
personality of Christ. 

The feeling of friendship which does not find expression 
will die. If you and I are friends and yet I am unwilling to 



ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 27 

give expression to that friendship, it will atrophy. If I slip 
out of the room quietly when some one else enters, just to 
keep from being seen in your presence, my friendship will 
soon perish. A friendship which is not deep enough to be 
worth acknowledgment is a worthless matter. 

A great many people are trying to live the silent Chris- 
tian life. Like Nicodemus, they come to Jesus by night. 
Like him, they say that it is better to live than openly to pro- 
fess ; but alas ! like him also, when the testing time comes 
their silent, unexpressed friendship has not that robustness 
and strength which enables them to stand boldly for Christ. 
Alany seem to think that Christ's demand for open confes- 
sion is a purely arbitrary demand. Not so ; it is founded on 
the very nature of our being. Christ does not arbitrarily 
stand at the door of the kingdom and refuse us entrance 
unless we will confess him. He never does things arbitrarily. 
But Christ does stand at the door and say that you cannot 
grow in fellowship with him unless you are willing to be 
open and above board in your friendship ; and he says this 
because that is the very nature of our being. 

One of the serious dangers of our time is that we shall so 
far recoil from false expression, hypocrisy, and over-profes- 
sion that we shall be unwilling to give expression to the real 
convictions of our lives, and hence fail to fulfill a law of our 
being wdthout which no friendship can grow. One of the 
most important forms of confession is publicly joining the 
Church ; for to become a Church member does not essentially 
mean the subscribing to creeds and dogmas, but the affiliation 
of our lives with the body of men and women who are try- 
ing to make Christ known. 

Personal Thought: Have we ever thought it just a little 
unmanly to stand openly for Jesus Christ? Is this because 
we are ashamed of the manhood of Christ, or because we are 
ashamed of our own manhood? If it is the latter, will the 
refusal to avow our desire to be Christ's friend help us to 
grow into such a character that we need not be ashamed ? 



28 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY I. ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

"Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." (Rom. 
xii. 21.) 

"I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a 
father to the needy : and the cause of him that I knew not I searched 
out." (Job xxix. 15, 16.) 

"And he answered and said unto them, Go and tell John the 
things which ye have seen and heard ; the blind receive their sight, 
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are 
raised up, the poor have good tidings preached to them." (Luke 
vii. 22.) 



PART 7. STEPS IN ENTERING THIS FRIENDSHIP 

(Concluded). 

(/)' Service, 

Another fundamental law of life is service. That which 
does not serve must die. If I tie my hand down to my side 
and let it remain there for a year, when I remove the bandage 
the arm will hang lifeless and dead. It has atrophied because 
it has not served. If you and I are friends living in the same 
house, and you are launching a great altruistic scheme, the 
impulse of friendship will be to serve you. But suppose I 
say I am too busy ; suppose I say there is no money in that 
for me ; suppose I refuse to give you counsel or encourage- 
ment; what will happen to my friendship? It will die, of 
course. It costs' something to be a friend to a man, and one 
cannot pay the price in cheap coin. The only coin that will 
circulate here is time, thoughtfulness, love, life. One rea- 
son why so many of us have few friends is that we are not 
willing to pay the price. We would pay money — anything — 
except that final and supreme thing which it takes to have 
friendship — the giving of life in loving service. Perhaps 
this is why so many men and women cannot or do not find 
happiness in the home life. It costs life to be the kind of 
man or woman that will make the right conditions for a 
friendship as husband or as wife. Not infrequently one of 
the parties is unwilling to pay the price, and no real friend- 
ship can live. 



ENTRANCE INTO CHRISTIAN LIFE. 29 

To be a friend of Jesus Christ means service. The very 
essence of Christianity is that we shall share with our 
brother that which we have. No man can be a Christian who 
will not serve in Christ's kingdom ; and our field of service 
is among men who are Christ's brothers and God's children. 
"For I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat. . . . Inas- 
much as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these 
least, ye did it unto me." (Matt. xxv. 35, 40.) 

Now this is not simply a dictum of religion; it is a fun- 
damental law of our being. That which does not serve dies. 
It is because so many have neglected to heed this law that 
they have found themselves without any abiding conscious- 
ness of a friendly relationship with Christ. In personal 
conference with hundreds of college men to whom religion 
has come to have no meaning, I have almost always dis- 
covered the fact that such men had not been workers. They 
had not served in Christ's kingdom, hence their soul life had 
died. If I am to be your friend, I must serve you where I 
can. I may not be able to give you large sums of money, 
but I can give you sympathy, I can speak a good word for 
you, I can do whatever my ability allows-, and no more is 
needed. If we are to be Christ's friends, the fundamental 
law of our being demands that we serve. We cannot disre- 
gard this law and grow in friendship. We may not be able 
to preach a great sermon, or lead with power in public 
prayer or give great sums of money to missions, but we can 
stand as a witness for Christ; we can invite a friend to go 
with us to Church ; we can help a friend to form the habit 
of daily Bible study. We can do whatever our ability al- 
lows, and nothing more is required. 

I think this is the authentic sign and seal 

Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad 

And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts 

Into a rage to suffer for mankind, 

And recommence at sorrow : drops like seed 

After the blossom, ultimate of all. 

Say, does the seed-corn scorn earth and seek the sun? 

Surely it has no other end and aim 

Than to drop, once more to die, into the ground. 

Taste cold and darkness and oblivion there : 

And thence rise, treelike, grow through pain to joy. 

More joy, most joy — do man good again.^ 

— Browning's "Balaustion's Adventure." 



STUDY 11. 

What Really Happens When a Man Becomes a 

Christian. 



32 



INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY 11. WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN A 
MAN BECOMES A CHRISTIAN. 

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born 
of the Spirit is spirit." (John iii. 6.) 

"For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit 
is life and peace: . . . But if the Spirit of him that raised up 
Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus 
from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his 
Spirit that dwelleth in you." (Rom. viii. 6, ii.) 



PART I. CONVERSION. 

Some time or other a man wakes up to the fact that he is 
wrong, that he has lived without reference to the will of his 
Father, God ; he deliberately makes up his mind that he will 
come to God and ask forgiveness ; he deliberately gives him- 
self over to a friendly attitude toward that Fatherly person ; 
by his life and expressions he declares that he is trying to live 
on friendly terms with God ; by the service of his life he be- 
gins to lead others into this friendly relationship — and we say 
he is converted. 

Perhaps this change in his life has been a sudden break; 
perhaps his former life has been openly rebellious. Then we 
say he has had a marvelous change. Or perhaps this change 
has been gradual ; perhaps it has not been the changing of 
his direction of life, but simply his awakening, when he de- 
liberately faces the facts, to the consciousness of a deeper 
meaning in the things he has been doing. Perhaps it is just 
a conscious and deliberate acceptance as his own of the fel- 
lowship of Christ which has always been the atmosphere of 
his being. In any case, it is an awakening to reality, a delib- 
erate choosing of a life program. When a man assumes this 



IV HAT REALLY HAPPENS. 



33 



new attitude, he is by that very fact a Christian. He has put 
himself into such an attitude that God is able to forgive him 
and take him^ back into his approving love. 

"To be converted," says Prof. William James, "to be re- 
generated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain 
an assurance — are so many phrases which denote the process, 
gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided and con- 
sciously wrong, inferior, and unhappy, becomes unified and 
consciously right, superior, and happy, in consequence of its 
firmer hold on religious realities."^ 

In Study I. we have attempted to show that the steps by 
which one enters the Christian life are perfectly natural 
steps. Religious life is not something apart, but is the whole 
being going out to God, in accordance with the very laws by 
which we live our lives of human friendship. 

When one becomes a Christian (if you wish to use the 
word), when one becomes converted, when one deliberately 
puts himself into the presence of God with the desire to live 
the God life, something has really happened. If nothing 
really happens, if we are not different after we become Chris- 
tians, if some new dynamic has not entered our lives — then 
all talk about religion is twaddle. If, however, something 
has actually happened, and we have a new power and a new 
life, every man wants this thing we call religion. If we can 
show that religion makes a real difference, we have made it 
binding for all men. In this Study let us face this question 
frankly. 

Meditation: If you are a Christian, can you tell what ac- 
tually did happen in your case ? If not a Christian, what are 
you expecting to happen ? Do not be satisfied with general 
terms, but make your thought specific. 

^"Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 189. 



34 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY 11. WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN A 
MAN BECOMES A CHRISTIAN. 

"Create in me a clean heart, O God; 
And renew a right spirit within me. 
Cast me not away from thy presence ; 
And take not thy Holy Spirit from me. 
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; 
And uphold me with a willing spirit." (Ps. li. 10-12.) 

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah : though 
your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; though they be 
red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, 
ye shall eat the good of the land." (Isa. i. 18, 19.) 

"But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through 
Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation : to wit, that 
God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning 
unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of 
reconciliation. We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ, as 
though God were entreating by us : we beseech you on behalf of 
Christ, be ye reconciled to God." (2 Cor. v. 18-20.) 



PART 2. SENSE OF ESTRANGEMENT REMOVED. 

One of the most serious results of sin is the fact that it 
estranges the sinner from the person against whom the 
wrong has been committed. As soon as you have wronged 
or injured another you at once begin to shun him; you will 
walk a whole block not to meet him. It is very unpleasant 
to be thrown in his presence. A great barrier has been 
raised. This feeling of estrangement makes one afraid even 
to ask forgiveness. Once, when I was at the Agricultural 
and Mechanical College of Mississippi, a fine fellow became 
a Christian at one of the meetings. The next morning he 
came to m}^ room and threw down before me a stamped 



WHAT REALLY HAPPENS. 35 

envelope addressed to his father, and asked me to write his 
father telHng of his changed Hfe. When asked why he did 
not write himself, he said that he did not feel that he could 
because his life had been so sinful, and he and his father had 
been so deeply estranged. 

Sin breaks up the harmony of friendship between man 
and God. When a man turns back and asks forgiveness, 
this estrangement is at once removed. The way is opened 
up for a genuine communion. We are so accustomed to 
measure the guilt of sin by its physical results that we often 
overlook the fact that the removal of this sense of estrange- 
ment is the most vital and fundamental result of the soul's 
turning from sin. 

The removal of estrangement at once creates in the soul 
of a man a feeling of oneness with God. The dawn of a 
God consciousness is therefore one of the fundam^ental re- 
sults of a man's deliberate giving himself to the Christian 
fellowship. 

"When the sense of estrangement," writes Professor Lu- 
eba, "fencing man about in a narrowly limited ego breaks 
down, the individual finds himself 'at one with all creation.' 
He lives in the universal Hfe; he and man, he and nature, 
he and God are one."^ 

^Quoted from "Varities of Religious Experience," p. 247. 



36 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY 11. WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN A 
MAN BECOMES A CHRISTIAN. 

"For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." (Phil. i. 21.) 

"Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency 
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord : for whom I suffered the 
loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain 
Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, 
even that which is from God by faith : that I may know him, and the 
power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, be- 
coming conformed unto his death; if by any means I may attain 
unto the resurrection from the dead." (Phil. iii. 8- 11.) 



PART 3. THE CHANGE FROM A SELF-CENTERED TO A 
GOD-CENTERED LIFE. 

The center of the non-Christian life is the ego. The phi- 
losophy of this life is self-preservation and self-development. 
Even the best of the non-Christian religions are self-cen- 
tered. They turn the thought of the worshiper in upon him- 
self, so that salvation in these religions is a selfish release 
or freedom from punishment. So deep is this matter of self 
ingrained in us that we are scarcely able to shake ourselves 
free from it. So long as one continues to be completely 
self-centered there can be no friendship, for friendship 
means the giving up of self, the surrender of one's life to 
another life. It means the submerging of our good in the 
larger good of two lives. 

When a man deliberately yields himself to the friendship 
of Christ, somehow he ceases to be a self-centered man and 
becomes a God-centered man. The man who before thought 
only of himself now begins to think about the things in which 
God is interested. A big athlete in one of our colleges was 
accustomed to laugh at missions as the work of fanatics. 



WHA T RE ALL Y HAPPENS. ■ 37 

But one day he was converted. He became a follower of 
Christ, and at once began to wonder why he should not go 
out to the non-Christian lands to preach the gospel. Some- 
thing had happened in his life : \vhereas before he was sel- 
fish, now he was unselfish; whereas he was planning for 
his own pleasure, now he forgot himself in service for others. 
It is a mighty change which takes a life directed for years in 
one selfish channel and suddenly turns it in an exactly oppo- 
site direction. This is a fact which no scientific mind can 
pass over lightly. What has happened ? 

The psychologist says that by a sudden emotion or other- 
wise the life has become organized around a new nervous 
center; that the old channels of thought have been walled 
up ; and that the self has become identified with a new world, 
where newer and broader channels of thought must be found. 
This seems perfectly plausible ; indeed, I think it is the W3.y 
in which the change combes about. But what makes that 
change? Why should religion and religion alone make this 
completely new center of nervous life ? 

The religious man knows what has happened. Somehow, 
doubtless according to the laws of psychology — for God 
works according to law, though not necessarily according to 
what man conceives to be law — somehow God has touched 
the soul of a man, and all things have become new. His 
very thoughts move in different channels. The very chan- 
nels of his old thought have been inhibited — walled up, to 
put it in untechnical terms — and his life flows out in an en- 
tirely different direction. It is a marvelous thing to take a 
self-centered, self-indulgent, self-loving soul and turn it 
round into a God-centered, self-sacrificing, service-loving 
Hfe. And yet that is what happens when men become Chris- 
tians. 

Who that one moment has the least descried him 

Dimly and faintly, hidden and afar, 
Doth not despise all excellence beside him, 

Pleasures and powers that are not and that are 

^Myers's ''St. Paul" 



38 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY 11. WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN A 
MAN BECOMES A CHRISTIAN. 

"For thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
And crownest him with glory and honor. 

Thou makest him to have dominion over the work of thy hands 
Thou has put all things under his feet" (Ps. viii. 5, 6.) 

"The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are 
children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint 
heirs with Christ; if so be that we sufifer with him, that we may be 
also glorified with him." (Rom. viii. i6, 17.) 



PART 4. A NEW APPRECIATION OF THE SELF. 

One of the most marked results of the Christian life is the 
nev^ appreciation which the Christian has of his own life. 
This seems almost to contradict the last section of our study, 
where we saw a man forgetting himself in service for others. 
But the two conceptions are entirely compatible. The Chris- 
tian man at once sees the larger significance of his own life 
and its power for service. 'Tt seems that the heightened 
worth of self and the altruistic impulses in conversion are 
closely bound up together, and the differences between them 
lie simply in the different content of consciousness, deter- 
mined by the direction in which it is turned. The central 
fact underlying both is the formation of a new ego, a fresh 
point of reference for mental states.'"^ In a later study wje 
shall discuss the new valuation which Christianity gives to 
humanity at large. Here we are concerned with the Chris- 
tian man finding a new and exalted selfhood. 

St. Paul at once saw that this new friendship related him 
directly to God and to Jesus Christ. He became a joint heir 
with Christ. This gave a new dignity and a new meaning to 
his whole personality. He was at once an heir and a co- 
worker with Christ. 

^Starbuck's "Psychology of Religion," p. 129. 



WHAT REALLY HAPPENS. 



39 



Just this same new appreciation of life comes to men to- 
day when they become friends of Jesus Christ. One of my 
good friends told me of such a change in his Ufe. He had 
been planning to do a certain thing in life — honorable, but 
not large or comimanding. Suddenly he awoke to the meaning 
of the Christ friendship — he became a Christian. After 
that his old ambition seemed to him entirely too small to 
satisfy. He immediately went to college to fit himself for a 
much larger career, which he has for some years been filling 
with great success. Suddenly a new ambition was created 
within him. Suddenly he began to realize that a larger thing 
was possible for him. Suddenly his own life took on a new 
meaning and new responsibilities. Something had really 
happened. 

The psychologist explains this new appreciation of self, 
the exaltation of the ego, as the coming into consciousness 
of new centers of nervous activity. To quote Professor Star- 
buck again: 'Tt is as if brain areas which had lain dormant 
had now suddenly come into activity — as if their stored-up 
energy had been liberated, and now began to function."^ 
Later Professor Starbuck goes on to say that this latent 
or stored-up nervous energy might have lain dormant for- 
ever had not a religious awakening released it. Our obser- 
vation goes to prove that precisely this is what is happening 
in thousands of cases to-day. Men are using only a part of 
their splendid capacities because they have never felt the 
contagion of the God life, which kindles into flame the 
smoldering embers of spiritual energy. 

Something actually happens when a man suddenly awakes 
to the larger reaches of his own person. The psychologist 
has rendered us a great service in showing us just how the 
touch of the God life brings into the realm of conscious ac- 
tivity the latent energies of our soul. 

Meditation: Are you living in such close conscious fellow- 
ship with God as to have all your powers of mind and heart 
alert and active ? Are you satisfied with less than your best ? 

^Starbuck's "Psychology of Religion," p. 132. 



40 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY 11. WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN A 
MAN BECOMES A CHRISTIAN. 

"For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the 
flesh ; for these are contrary the one to the other ; that ye may not do 
the things that ye would. But if ye are led by the Spirit ye are not 
under the law." (Gal. v. 17, 18.) 

"Wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me out of the body 
of this death ? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then 
I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve the law of God; but with the 
flesh the law of sin." (Rom. vii. 24, 25.) 



PART 5. UNIFICATION OF PERSONALITY. 

One of the most intense realities of life is the fact of strug- 
gle, the battle between the lower nature and the higher 
nature ; or, if you please to put it so, the tug of two opposing 
worlds within the soul. All men are conscious of this 
double personality. This struggle, in which the lower na- 
ture seemed most frequently victorious, St. Paul expresses 
in the familiar phrase : "The good which I would I do not : 
but the evil which I would not, that I practice." (Rom. vii. 

19). 

Now the psychologist accounts for this divided personal- 
ity by the fact that the personality is dominated at different 
times by sets of ideas often diametrically opposed in ten- 
dency. These opposing sets of ideas, rising into conscious- 
ness, struggle to overcome each other, and a man finds him- 
self drawn in two opposite directions. Groups of ideas 
concerned with good and evil, respectively, cause the most in- 
tense struggle because they are so absolutely and uncompro- 
misingly opposed to each other. Hence it arises that the de- 
cision to become a Christian man may be accompanied with 
the most terrific battle that a man ever fights. It is the at- 
tempt of the Godward ideas to assume complete dominance 
over the evilward ideas. 'The flesh lusteth against the 
Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." 

When a man becomes a Christian he deliberately puts the 
power of his will on the side of the Godward ideas. He ex- 
alts them into the place of supremacy. He deliberately re- 



WHA T RE ALL V HAPPENS. 4I 

fuses to allow the opposite ideas to control. He deliberately 
makes up his mind that these lower centers of thought ener- 
gy shall not have a central place in his consciousness. "It 
inakes a great difference," says Professor James, ''to a man 
whether one set of his ideas or another be the center of his 
energy; and it makes a great difference as regards any set 
of ideas which he may possess, whether they become central 
or remain peripheral in him. To say that a man is 'con- 
verted' means, in these terms, that religious ideals previous^ 
peripheral [on the outer edge, dim, indistinct] in his con- 
sciousness now take a central place, and that religious aims 
form the habitual center of his energy."^ 

This is the psychological process of the formation of the 
new Christian life. The real thing which has happened is 
the touch of the soul of a personal God on the sensitive soul 
of a man in such manner that the very center of his being 
is changed. Somehow the ideas of God-consciousness move 
into the central iield of life, and by the marvelous power of 
the touch of God they are strong enough to hold sway. The 
battle may not be over, the old ideas may rise up again to 
find expression, but the real controlling power of the life is 
the God-consciousness. 

A college man I knew, who was a degraded, helpless 
drunkard, walked into the Jerry McAuley Mission one night 
to beg money, with which he meant to buy whisky. He 
heard the simple testimonies of how God had helped other 
men to break this awful habit. He made up his mind to try 
it. He gave his life to God that night. Four nights later I 
heard that man give his simple testimony at the meeting. He 
said : 'T came into this house four nights ago a helpless, hope- 
less drunkard. I had not been completely sober for many_, 
many months. I gave my life to God, and, men, for four 
days and nights I have been a sober man, even though before 
I would have gone through hell to get a drink of whisky." 
The years have passed, and the testimony is still true. 

From a personality "which was divided, consciously 
wrong, inferior, and unhappy," he became a personality 
"which was unified, consciously right, superior, and happy," 
because a new God-consciousness had dawned in his life and 
had taken the central place in his being. Something had 
really happened. 

^"Varieties of Religions Experience," p. 196. 



42 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY II. WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN A 

MAN BECOMES A CHRISTIAN. 

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, 
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control ; against such 
there is no law." (Gal. v. 22, 23.) 

"For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but right- 
eousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." (Rom. xiv. 17.) 



PART 6. A NEW SPIRIT OF KINDLINESS TOWARD MEN. 

The test of a life is its attitude toward those with whom it 
is associated. If I claim to be a Christian, and yet contin- 
ually criticise and find fault with my companions in social 
life, every man sees the hypocrisy of my profession. If I 
have no control of my temper, but am constantly flying into 
a rage with my associates in social life, class room, or athletic 
field, I am not exhibiting the fruits of Christian experience. 
The fruit of the Christ friendship is the friendly life. If one 
does not find himself growing into an increasing friendliness 
for men, if he is not more sympathetic and kindly in spirit, 
then he is not giving the Christ life a chance to mold his 
character. 

This new kindliness of spirit is precisely what men do ex- 
perience when they become followers of Christ. In the re- 
sponses concerning their religious experience, which Profes- 
sor Starbuck's questionnaire elicited, I find the following: 
Case I, "The change made me very affectionate, while before 
I was very cold to my parents; case 2, "I felt it my duty 
after that to be polite and sympathetic. My enemies were 
changed into friends ;" case 3, "1 spoke at once to a person 
with whom I had been angry." 



WHAT REALLY HAPPENS. 



43 



A new element has come into human hfe which makes it 
more sympathetic, more kindly, more gracious. Montgomery 
in his poem, "The Watchman," makes the captain of the 
guard at Christ's tomb say that seeing Christ had trans- 
formed his entire being. 

I care no more for glory; all desire 
For honor and for strife is gone from me, 
All eagerness for war. I only care 
To help and save bruised beings, and to give 
Some comfort to the weak and suffering; 
I cannot even hate those Jews; my lips 
Speak harshly of them, but within my heart 
I only feel compassion ; and I love 
All creatures to the vilest of the slaves, 
Who seem to me as brothers. Claudia, 
Scorn me not for this weakness ; It will pass — 
Surely 'twill pass in time and I shall be 
Maximus, strong and valiant once again 
Forgetting that slain god. And yet — and yet — 
He looked as one who could not be forgot ! 



44 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY II. WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN A 

MAN BECOMES A CHRISTIAN. 

"For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus 
Christ, and him crucified." (i Cor, ii, 2.) 

"Yea A^erily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of 
the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord : for whom I suffered the 
loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain 
Christ." (Phil. iii. 8.) 



PART 7. A NEW CENTER OF LOYALTY. 

Growing out of these new elements that enter into the 
new man, and partly at least the basis of these new forces, is 
the sense of loyalty which arises in the really religious soul. 
We talk much of religious devotion, but I prefer the word 
loyalty, because it is more personal. It denotes our connec- 
tion with a person outside ourselves. It is precisely this 
personal loyalty that every man needs — something to take 
him outside himself, something that gathers up his scattered 
energies, some one in whose cause man can lose himself. 
Many a man is wasting his life in mere twaddle because he 
has never found an ideal great enough or a personality at- 
tractive enough wholly to command him. The one salvation 
for hundreds of men will be to fmd outside themselves a 
great, absorbing life which will unify their powers and give 
them a cause large enough to draw out all their latent ener- 
gies. 'Tf you want to find a way of living," says Professor 
Royce, ''which surmounts doubt and centralizes your powers, 
it must be some such way as all the loyal in common have 
trodden since first loyalty was known among men."^ 

Professor William James points out that there are in every 

^"Philosophy of Loyalty," p. 46. 



WHAT REALLY HAPPENS. 45 

man a great man\^ restricting and retarding forces. He calls 
them inhibitions. These inhibitions are the forces which 
constantly say ''No" when we are about to undertake a hard 
thing. They account for our moods of vacillation and weak- 
ness. The only thing that will break down these obstructions 
is a great passion. "Given a certain amount of love, indig- 
nation, generosity, magnanimity, admiration, loyalty, enthu- 
siasm of self-surrender, the result is always the same. That 
whole raft of cowardly obstructions which in tame persons 
and dull moods are sovereign impediments to action, sink 
away at once."^ 

It is precisely this which happens when one centers his 
attention on the supreme personality of the universe as he is 
revealed in Jesus Christ. There comes into his life the 
motive power of a new affection. In a man like St. Paul this 
loyalty becomes a consuming passion* which sweeps every 
lower ideal before it. This kind of loyalty sets for us a 
worthy life task, gives us strength to live for it, and heart- 
ens us as we labor. Labor is transformed in the presence 
of such a passion, and even pain becomes suffused with some- 
thing akin to joy if it is incurred in the pathway of loyalty 
to the central person of the universe. 

He who finds himself weak and vacillating, who finds the 
battles of temptation all too hard, who feels himself lacking 
in decision and concentration needs to throw his life into 
the Christian life with complete abandon, for in the whole- 
souled friendship of Jesus Christ there is power for new 
life. He who knows that friendship has had something 
happen within him which makes him a new man. 

^"Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 266. 



STUDY III. 

The Distinctive Message of Christianity. 

(47) 



48 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY III. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"He hath cast off thy calf, O Samaria; mine anger is kindled 
against them: how long will it be ere they attain to innocency? For 
from Israel is even this ; the workman made it, and it is no God ; yea, 
the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces." (Hosea viii. 5, 6.) 

"For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world 
are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, 
even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without 
excuse: because that, knowing God, they glorified him not as Gcd, 
neither gave thanks ; but became vain in their reasonings, and their 
senseless heart was darkened." (Rom. i. 20, 21.) 



PART I. THE GOD OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 

In order to understand clearly the uniqueness of the 
Christian message it is necessary to set forth very briefly 
the message of the non-Christian faiths. It will be neces- 
sary to do full credit to these religions if v^e are to have a 
fair understanding of the supremacy of Christianity. Surely 
every religion has much of good in it, for it represents, in 
part at least, the striving of the Spirit of God with these 
people, as he has attempted to lead all men to himself. "The 
scientists," says Professor Knox, "may ignore the wisdom 
of Asia, but the Christian cannot ignore its faiths. He must 
consider their claim and compare them with his own." Per- 
haps we shall find that this comparison will be the greatest 
proof of the supremacy of Christ's gospel. 

As a religion is determined by its conception of God, let 
us first see what these non-Christian faiths have to say con- 
cerning this ultimate reality. 

Islam holds firmly to a personal Being, who is the divine 
and final person in the universe. "There is no God but 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 49 

God," is the battle cry of the Mohammedan. In the fact of 
a personal God, Islam is like unto Christianity, but in the 
characteristics of that God they stand far apart. Christi- 
anity believes in a God who is self-existent, has free will, 
but always acts in accordance with his own highest self. 
Islam, on the other hand, sets forth a God who is self-ex- 
istent, has a free will, acts in entirely arbitrary fashion, with- 
out any regard for self-consistency. The Mohammedan God 
is therefore one without consistency, or, one may almost say, 
without real morality ; for no person who is arbitrary can be 
completely moral. Of the ninety-nine names given to the 
God of Islam, there is none that denotes the idea of father- 
hood or tender care. He is absolutely separate and distinct 
from the world and touches it only according to caprice, not 
according to any law of self-consistency. Such a God, su- 
premely worthy in its conception of unity, which opposes all 
polytheism and destroys all idol worship, can hardly satisfy 
the longings of the human soul for fellowship with the di- 
vine. 

4 



50 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY III. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"And he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face 
of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the 
bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they 
might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each 
one of us : for in him we live, and move, and have our being ; as cer- 
tain even of your own poets have said. For we are also his offspring." 
(Acts xvii. 26-28.) 



PART 2. THE GOD OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 

(Continued). 

Turning from Mohammedanism to Hinduism, we im- 
mediately come into an entirely different realm of thought. 
Mohammed held to a God of distinct personality and com- 
plete unity. While the Hindu religion from time to time 
declares its God to be personal, it is a personality far dif- 
ferent from anything we know. He is the sole essence 
and reality of the universe, the unity pervading all things. 
Beside him there is no other reality. "There is no second 
outside of him, no other distinct from him," is the set formula 
of the Hindu faith. This does not mean that there is no 
other God beside him' ; it means that there is no other reality 
beside him. 

There is in this conception the fundamental truth of the 
unity of life, the interrelatedness of all being ; but there is the 
fundamental error of leaving out of account all human per- 
sonality. If there is no other beside God, then I am a mere 
dream, a shadow, a delusion. This being so, it is made im- 
possible for me to know that that is so ; for my mind, which 
tells me it is so, is not real, has no existence. 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 51 

The Buddhist conception goes still further and denies not 
only the reality of man but the reality of God. There is no 
reality; all is change and decay and delusion. 'Tt is an es- 
sential doctrine,'' says Rhys Davids, perhaps the greatest au- 
thority on Buddhism — "It is an essential doctrine, constant- 
ly insisted upon in the original Buddhist texts and still held, 
so far as I have been able to ascertain, by all Buddhists, that 
there is nothing, either divine or human, either animal or 
vegetable or material, which is permanent. There is no be- 
ing; there is only a becoming"^ 

Personal Thought: Reflect for a moment to-day on what 
the value of religion would be to you if you were convinced 
of the truth of the doctrine of these religions — that is, that 
there is no such thing as a human person ; that you are sim- 
ply deluded when you think you exist. 

^"Am. Lectures," p. 121. 



52 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY III. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"And as for thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, whom thou shalt 
have ; of the nations that are round about you, of them shall ye buy 
bondmen and bondmaids." (Lev. xxv. 44.) 



PART 3- VALUATION OF MAN IN THE NON-CHRISTIAN 

RELIGIONS. 

According to Islam, man is not akin to God ; he does not 
partake of his nature and essence ; neither, indeed, is such a 
thing desirable. Man is the creature of God ; he is absolutely 
dependent upon his Creator in everything. While theo- 
retically he is a moral agent, practically he cannot be, for 
God has fixed his fate long before man comes into being. 
One Mohammedan writer has put it thus : 

When fate has come, man cannot it avert; 
Fate fails not, should he mind and sight exert. 
Beyond the Lord's decree, writ by his pen. 
Nor less nor more comes to his servants, men. 

This conception at once takes from man all his dignity and 
worth. He is simply a puppet in the hands of an arbitrary 
God. The Hindu and Buddhist conception is far less sat- 
isfactory. According to the former, man has no distinct ex- 
istence, but is simply an emanation from the divine, to which 
he will sooner or later return. He is not responsible, for 
whatever he does is the deed of the all-pervading God. This 
at once cuts the nerve of all high endeavor. Buddhism goes 
further and denies man any existence whatever. Man is 
simply a shadow, or, to be more exact, he is just the result 
of the stored-up energy of past deeds and desires. Desire, 
lust, longing — these are the efficient cause of existence. If 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 53 

I do not put away all desire, when my being disintegrates, 
another being must come into existence to live out the result 
of the stored-up energy of my desires and deeds (karma). 
The horror of life, therefore, is rebirth in another form, to 
have new desires, only to give birth to a new existence. Man, 
therefore, is a creature bound to the eternal round of decay 
and rebirth in endless and monotonous succession. Salva- 
tion, as we shall see later, is the getting free from this wheel 
of destiny, the stopping of this monotonous succession of 
rebirths. 

These conceptions do not dignify manhood. Hence in 
these countries the common man is nothing; he is simply a 
slave. Only the man who has fortune or some temporal 
blessing can be worthy of notice. Man is valuable not be- 
cause of what he essentially is but because of something he 
possesses. 

Religions which have no more exalted ideas of man are 
not apt to make provision for a very worthy salvation. 



54 



INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY III. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, 
And cleanse me from my sin. 
For I know my transgressions; 
And my sin is ever before me. 
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, 
And done that which is evil in thy sight; 
That thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, 
And be clear when thou judgest." (Ps. li. 2-4.) 



PART 4. CONCEPTION OF SIN IN THE NON-CHRISTIAN 

RELIGIONS. 

No non-Christian religion has such a note of personal sin 
as that in the reference just quoted, Psalm li. 2-4. 

Every religion, so far as I am aware, takes account of a 
man's consciousness of sin — that is, recognizes that man is 
out of harmony with his truer self and his environment. The 
form which this conception of sin takes varies greatly. 

The Mohammedan conception of sin is nearest to that of 
Christianity. Here sin is a transgression of the will of God, 
and hence personal. The fundamental weakness of the con- 
ception lies in the fact that this will of God is purely arbi- 
trary and not necessarily in conformity to any fundamental 
law of right or wrong. In other words, while Mohammedan 
sin is personal, it is the transgression of the whimsical com- 
mands of an arbitrary God. Thus, as a Mohammedan ex- 
pressed it to a missionary : "If I use tobacco, God may damn 
me ; but if I murder or commit adultery, God may be merci- 
ful." This at once throws sin into the realm of arbitrary 
codes and does away with its most heinous aspect — the non- 
conformity to a holy and loving will of a self-consistent God. 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 55 

According to Hinduism, since there is no personal God, 
there can be no such thing as nonconformity to his will ; so 
sin in the Christian sense is unknown. Also, in view of the 
fact that God is all and in all, and nothing exists beside him, 
all deeds are simply the deeds of the God, and hence cannot 
be sinful. There can be no such thing as personal transgres- 
sion. In spite, however, of this philosophic unreality of sin, 
the Hindu religion has much to say about it. Somehow the 
sense of sin cannot be set aside. The chief sin is the affirma- 
tion of personal, separate existence. Thought of personality 
is a delusion and an error out of which arises all suffering. 
It is this which gives rise to karma (the influence which 
lives on in a new birth), which condemns one to perpetual 
rebirths. 

Buddhist sin is closely akin to that of Hinduism. Since 
there is no such thing as permanent existence, either human 
or divine, since all is change, the chief sin is to harbor the de- 
lusion of personal existence. The first fetter which holds 
man from entering the eightfold path of peace is sakkaya 
ditthi, the delusion of self. 

From this very brief statement one immediately sees that 
sin has no such terror for the non-Christian peoples as it 
has for those of the Christian faith. Sin with them is error, 
delusion, failure; with Christianity it is personal, willful 
transgression. 



56 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY III. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God 
gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are 
not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covet- 
ousness, maliciousness ; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; 
whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, 
inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understand- 
ing, covenant breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful : who, 
knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practice such things 
are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them 
that practice them." (Rom. i. 28-32.) 



PART 5. STANDARDS OF MORALITY IN NON-CHRISTIAN 

RELIGIONS. 

It cannot be doubted that the non-Christian religions have 
many splendid moral precepts. We have paid little attention 
to Confucianism in these studies, but here one ought to say 
that the Confucian standard of morals is high. The golden 
rule, though expressed negatively, the high reverence for 
parents, the inculcation of virtue, courage, benevolence, loy- 
alty — all these are splendid. But in Confucianism God is ig- 
nored, woman is degraded, polygamy sanctioned, and no 
power is given whereby the other virtues may be attained. 
China, leprous with sin and degradation, is a full and suffi- 
cient answer to Confucian ethics as a final system. 

Mohammedanism inculcates the highest reverence for God, 
mercy to captives, charity to the needy, patience in hardships, 
sobriety, and kindness. These are all well worth while. But 
side by side with these precepts it inculcates the most bitter 
cruelty to, and persecution of, non-believers; slavery is di- 
rectly and positively sanctioned; lying to women justified; 



DISTIXCril'E MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 57 

woman is degraded and made a tool of man's lust, and even 
heaven itself is a land where every man may have unnum- 
bered houris to minister to his debased passion. No one who 
reads the Koran, much less any one who views the practical 
outcome of the Mohammedan code of morals, can find any 
final standard there. 

Hindu moral codes differ with the numerous sects, but 
on the whole it may be said that all alike teach self-control, 
truthfulness, and the sanctity of the marriage relation. The 
more cultured sect, following the Bhagavad-Gita as their sa- 
cred book, may be said to have a fair code of morals. But 
no religion can pose as having a final standard for morals 
which sets up in its temples carvings which are such a trav- 
esty of moralit}' and decency that no Christian woman can 
visit the temple. Nor can it hope to have much moral power 
when its gods in incarnate form are notorious as thieves and 
licentious beyond measure, and a part of its sacred books 
must be condemned by the English government as obscene 
literature. 

In Buddhism there is the most utter confusion of essen- 
tials and nonessentials. Thus, sleeping on a trundle-bed is 
put side by side with hatred, pride, self-righteousness. Mo- 
rality is a code and not a principle. Not only so, but all basis 
for morality is cut from beneath a Buddhist's feet, for he be- 
lieves in neither self nor God, and there can be no moral duty 
for either. 

None of these religions can satisfy our sense of moral life. 
They are the morals of a stationary code, and cannot meet 
the needs of growing life. 



58 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY III. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

What grief 
Springs of itself and springs not of desire ? 
Senses and things perceived mingle and light 
Passion's quick spark of fire. 

This is peace : 
To conquer love of self and lust of life, 
To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast, 
To still this inward strife. 

Arnold's "The Light of Asia" 



PART 6. CONCEPTION OF SALVATION IN NON-CHRIS- 
TIAN RELIGIONS. 

By the word salvation we do not here refer specially to 
the future life. This is simply a resultant of salvation. Sal- 
vation is what a religion proposes to do for us here and now. 

In accordance with the Mohammedan idea of sin, as the 
transgression of the arbitrary mandate of God — often with- 
out regard to the fundamental conception of right and wrong 
— the result of sin is disfavor, but not guilt. Sin does not 
have the quality of guilt which it has for Christians. Hence 
Mohammedan salvation is not forgiveness but indulgence; 
not freedom from guilt, but freedom from punishment. A 
man who still has a murderous heart may gain entrance into 
paradise, if only God pleases to be indulgent. Personal holi- 
ness is not inculcated as the goal for Mohammedan character. 

According to Hinduism, the supreme evil of life is this 
embodied existence which continually returns in a new-em- 
bodied form. To get rid of this round of rebirth, to get away 
from embodied existence, to be reabsorbed into the divine, 
is the one conception of salvation. This can be attained only 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 59 

by the complete denial of the self, with all its desires and 
passions. Hence salvation is the going out of the fires of 
life. 

Buddhism is much akin to this. It also seeks freedom from 
embodied existence. It is necessary thereto that a man ex- 
tinguish all desire, all passion, all thought ; then he will pass 
out of this deluded state into nirvana, the state where he is 
at rest and without desire, without anxiety. Finally, when 
this present embodied existence is dissolved, he will simply 
be snuffed out; he will have attained extinction (parra-nib- 
bana). This is final and complete salvation. It is simply a 
nihilism. 



6o INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY III. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

How many births are past I cannot tell ; 

How many births to come no man can say. 
But this alone I know and know full well, 

That pain and grief embitter all the way. 

— South India Folk Song. 



PART 7. DO THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS SATISFY? 

We have very briefly set forth the non-Christian concep- 
tions of God, man, sin, morality, salvation, and we must now 
ask in conclusion : Do these religions satisfy the souls of 
men? 'The religious problem," says Professor Knox, ''is: 
Given man, dependent and ignorant, with feelings, fears, 
hopes, hatreds, loves, in the midst of he knows not what 
dangers and difficulties; how shall he be triumphant over 
fear and sin and death? How shall he live in peace and 
make existence not only endurable but worthy? Thus, 
though some may regret it, the direct and fundamental 
proofs of our religion can be found only in its satisfaction 
of the cravings of the soul, and by its adaptation to the high- 
est wants of society through its ethical activities."^ 

Measured by these standards, do the non-Christian reli- 
gions prove adequate ? The supreme craving in every human 
soul is for fellowship with a higher kindred power. Brown- 
ing has well voiced this hunger of the soul in his splendid 
words in "Pauline :" 

The last point I can trace is, rest, beneath 
Some better essence than itself, in weakness; 

^"Direct and Fundamental Proofs of the Christian Religion," pp. 
156 and 173. 



DISTIXCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 6l 

This is "myself," not what I think should be : 

And what is that T hunger for but God? 

My God, my God, let me for once look on thee 

As though naught else existed, we alone. 

And as creation crumbles, my soul's spark 

Expands till I can say : "Even from myself 

I need thee and I feel thee and I love thee." 

I do not plead my rapture in thy works 

For love of thee, nor that I feel as one 

Who cannot die : but there is that in me 

Which turns to thee, which loves or which should love. 

Which one of the religions which we have discussed can 
meet this test? Islam cannot, for its God is a capricious, 
austere, absentee ruler who cares naught for human life. 
Buddhism cannot, for it denies the existence of any God at 
all. Hinduism, though its contemplative method comes 
nearer than any other, cuts off any final satisfaction, for there 
cannot be any real communion, since there are no persons to 
enter into that relationship. There is only one ; that is God, 
and even his is not a person, but a vague, pantheistic essence 
that pervades the universe. 

Those who have studied the peoples in the mission fields 
tell us that the souls of these men are hungry. There is a 
great unrest, a great longing which finds no final satisfaction 
through the non-Christian faiths. That these religions have 
value cannot be doubted ; but that they are not able to meet 
the needs of men is equally clear to any careful student. 



STUDY IV. 
The Distinctive Message of Christianity. 

(63) 



64 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep 
my word : and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, 
and make our abode with him." (John xiv. 23.) 

"When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out 
of Egypt. . . . Yet I taught Ephraim to walk ; I took them on my 
arms; but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords 
of a man, with bands of love : and I was to them as they that lift up 
the yoke on their jaws; and I laid food before them. . . . How 
shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I cast thee off, Israel? how 
shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboiim? My 
heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together. . . . 
I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to 
destroy Ephraim : for I am God, and not man : the Holy One in the 
midst of thee; and I will not come in wrath." (Hos. xi. i, 3, 4, 8, 9.) 

"God is a Spirit : and they that worship him must worship in spirit 
and truth." (John iv. 24.) 



PART I. THE CHRISTIAN'S CONCEPTION OF GOD. 

We have seen the failure of the non-Christian religions. 
In perfect fairness of spirit we must now inquire whether 
Christianity has any better religious message. Let us turn 
to the Christian conception of God. A later study will at- 
tempt to justify this conception. 

First of all, the God of Christianity is personal — that is, he 
is a conscious being, possessed of intelligence, will, and emo- 
tional life which enables him to be related with other beings. 
To say that God is personal does not mean that he is limited, 
for the Christian conception (that presented by the New Tes- 
tament) distinctly denies all limitation. He is complete in 
intelligence, will, and emotional possibilities. He knows all 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 65 

truth ; he is able at all times to control his actions. He al- 
ways does that which is worthy. 

Not only is God personal, but he is self-consistent. He 
cannot act otherwise than in accordance with his own nature 
— that is, in accordance with the reasonableness and essential 
truth in things. There is no arbitrariness here, no whimsical 
capriciousness. His character (and character inheres only 
in personality ; nothing else has character) is righteously 
self-consistent. 

Still further, Christianity sets forth the conception of a God 
who is a Father, and who sustains toward men the loving re- 
lation of Fatherhood. No other religion outside Christianity 
has such a conception. Judaism has it in embryo, though not 
well developed. This Father is ambitious to give to each 
child his largest and tRiest life. To this end he cares for each 
individual huinian soul, and nothing touches the life of man 
which does not touch also the heart of God. God is no ab- 
sentee Creator of the universe who sits outside the universe 
and sees it go. He is intimJately connected with the daily and 
hourly movements in the world. Although distinct in per- 
sonality, yet he pervades all life in a more real sense than the 
life of my friend pervades my life when we are in conscious 

communion. 

Thus he dwells in all 
From life's minute beginnings up at last 
To man — the consummation of this scheme of being. 

— Browning's "Paracelsus'' 

5 



^ INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"Which of you convicteth me of sin? If I say truth, why do ye 
not believe me?" (John viii. 46.) 

"And Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not 
on me, but on him that sent me. And he that beholdeth me, behold- 
eth him that sent me." (John xii. 44, 45.) 

"Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life : he that 
believeth on me, though ke die, yet shall he live; and whosoever 
liveth and believeth on me shall never die. Believest thou this? 
She saith unto him. Yea, Lord : I have believed that thou art the 
Christ, the Son of God, even he that cometh into the world." (John 
xi. 25-27.) 

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am 
meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matt xi. 28-30.) 



PART 2. WHO IS JESUS CHRIST? 

We can state here only in the barest outline the Christian 
conception of Christ. A later study will attempt to justify 
this conception. 

Jesus believed himself to be the one perfect man. Neither 
in his consciousness nor in the consciousness of his disciples 
do we find any indication that he ever sinned. 

He believed himself to hold a unique relation to his Fa- 
ther, God. Again and again he asserted that he was the mes- 
senger sent from, God to reveal to men the meaning of life. 

He believed that the world would be judged by the stand- 
ard of his own life. 

He believed that there was within himself that which would 
satisfy the longings of the human soul. 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 67 

"It is not by chance that Christianity centers in Jesus 
Christ and that he is accounted God and man. For thus the 
highest expression of truth is found in a person. If God be 
Father and man be his son, if self-giving love for the highest 
benefit of others be the supreme principle of their common 
nature, then the religious and ethical aspects of our faith are 
summed up in him. His life and his death reveal this love as 
supreme, and that is the final end of man. To that Christ ap- 
peals, to that he likens his Father, and that he asks from men 
as the condition of discipleship. Man becomes through per- 
fect service the complete expression of God. So that the 
Christian finds the true symbol of his faith not in any abstract 
principle of the nature of the Infinite, but in him v^ho went 
about doing good, and gave his life that his brethren also 
might become sons of God."^ 

^"Direct and Fundamental Proofs of the Christian Religion," pp. 
190, 191. 



68 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"And God created man in his own image, in the image of God 
created he him; male and female created he them,." (Gen. i. 27.) 

"And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert 
from the tempest, as streams of water in a dry place, as the shade of 
a great rock in a weary land." (Isa. xxxii. 2.) 

"I am the vine, ye are the branches : He that abideth in me, and I 
in him, the same beareth much fruit : for apart from me ye can do 
nothing." (John xv. 5.) 



PART 3. WHO IS MAN? 

According to Christianity man is a self-conscious, free 
moral being, made in God's likeness, and capable of under- 
standing, at least in part, the works and manifestations of 
God. 

No other religion gives to man such high dignity as does 
Christianity. Here he is represented not only as created in 
the image of God but he is knov^n as the friend and com- 
panion of God. Jesus was interested in every type of hu- 
manity — the Samaritan woman at the well, the poor, blind 
beggar at the roadside, the scarlet woman who slipped into 
the banquet hall and anointed his feet, the learned and re- 
spectable Nicodemus, the degraded taxgatherer Levi-Mat- 
thew, who was willing to make his living out of exorbitant 
taxes extorted from his fellow-countrymen — in all these 
he was intensely interested. 

Jesus was no pretender. He was no flatterer. He was 
interested in these people because he saw in them something 
genuinely worth while. As Dr. Bosworth points ont: "He 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 69 

represented this interest in human personaHty as not pe- 
culiar to himself but as shared by God and heaven."^ 

Now man is sacred because he is essentially akin to God, 
because there is a Godhead within him. Sin disfigures the 
image of God in man. It often lies dormant and undeveloped 
because of lack of attention, but the essential Godhead re- 
mains. One of the most remarkable things about Christ is 
his ability to see this kinship in the life of a man beneath all 
the veneer of poverty, ignorance, and sin. 

Perhaps the most marked characteristic of our time is 
our new appreciation of the value and sacredness of human 
personality. Indeed this is the very basis of our great social 
awakening, and both of these in turn are the outgrowth of 
the more careful understanding and interpretation of the 

message of Christ. 

Let all harmonies 
Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon 
The princel}' guest, whether in the soft attire 
Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil, 
And lending life to the dead form of faith, 
Give human nature reverence for the sake 
Of one who bore it, making it divine 
With the ineffable tenderness of God ; 
Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, 
The heirship of an unknown destiny. 
The unsolved mystery round about us 
Make a man more precious than the gold of Ophir. 

— Whittier's "Among the Hills." 

^'Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles," p. 115. 



70 



INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"Every one that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness; and sin is law- 
lessness." (i John iii. 4.) 

"Jesus answered them. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Every one 
that committeth sin is the bond servant of sin." (John viii. 34.) 

"For the wages of sin is death ; but the free gift of God is eternal 
life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. vi. 23.) 

"To him therefore that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to 
him it is sin." (Jas. iv. 17.) 

PART 4. WHAT IS SIN? 

Jesus says that the whole law can be summed up in love 
for God and love for our fellow-men. Sin is defined in the 
New Testament as the transgression of the law — that is, sin 
is disregard of God and of my fellow-men. St. Paul says : 
*'He that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law." (Rom. 
xiii. 8.) 

John speaks of the sinner as being a bond servant, as being 
under dominion. Sin must be a principle of the soul, a mo- 
tive of life, an intention. It does not necessarily express 
itself in an act. Christ spoke of it as a desire of the heart, 
whether gratified or not. Evidently sin is something that 
goes to the very roots of a man's being. It is fundamental. 

Perhaps we may define it as a person's deliberate atti- 
tude, act, or principle of life, which is in nonconformity 
with the will of God. It is putting my will over in oppo- 
sition to the known will of God. In other words, the sinful 
life is the self-centered life; the righteous life is the God- 
centered life. 

Selfishness, then, is the root of sin. It Is that unwilling- 
ness to love God and men and live on friendly terms with 
them, which attitude renders one incapable of thinking of the 
interest of others. Sin, therefore, is a great isolator. He who 
will not think of others cannot live a social life. He ban- 
ishes himself. But personality can live only through as- 
sociation with others. The very term personality denotes 
social relationships. Hence the sinful, selfish man cuts 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. yi 

himself off from that on which his life depends. "The soul 
that sinneth it shall die." 

All sin brings with it a sense of guilt, a sense of personal 
blameworthiness. This is not liability for punishment, not 
even the fear of punishment ; it is the responsibility which 
rests upon one when he has committed a sin. From this 
sense of guilt all men seek to be free. 

After I had spoken on Sunday at the University of Iowa, 
a man came to my room at the hotel to talk with me about his 
life. He started by telling me he had not come to talk re- 
ligion. Then he told me that he was a Jew, but did not 
believe there was a God or that there was any reality in sin. 
He then told me that he had done a certain thing (a heinous 
sin, though he did not name it so), that he had left his home 
to escape punishment and had finally entered the university. 
"Now," said he, "what I want to know is, Will it be all right 
if I live like a gentleman from now on ?" 

Looking straight at him I said: "How long did you say 
iou have been in the university?" 

"Three years." 

"And have you tried to be a gentleman all these years ?" 

His eyes flashed fire as he said : "I certainly have." 

"Well," said I, "Is it all, all right?" 

For a moment he seemed dazed, and then, leaning for- 
ward, he said: O but the memory of that awful deed; how 
can I get rid of it?" 

That is the sense of guilt consequent upon sin. Sin is 
the destroyer of happiness, the defiler of character, the de- 
spoiler of homes, the death of all real life. Sin deceives 
men. Sin makes men forget the sacred trusts of life. Sin 
makes men slaves. All this and more Christ said about sin. 
The great need of Christianity to-day is to realize anew the 
heinousness of sin; to see what it does, and how it wrecks 
and blights and deadens and blackens. It is a veritable body 
of death — foul, rotting, putrefying — and our freedom from 
it is our one salvation. The bitter cry of the world is for 
this freedom. It is the heinousness of sin that gives point 
and urgency to personal work. If sin does these things for 
man, how can we rest content without trying to lead men 
back from sin to God ? 

Meditation: Is there a sin in my heart; and do I know 
where to find peace ? Do I see other men sick from sin, and 
will I do nothing for them? 



72 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and 
with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself." (Luke x. 27.) 

"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them 
likewise." (Luke vi. 31.) 

"Thou knowest the commandments, Do not kill. Do not commit 
adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, 
Honor thy father and mother. And he said unto him, Teacher, all 
these things have I observed from my youth. And Jesus looking 
upon him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go, 
sell whatever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have 
treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." (Mark x. 19-21.) 



PART 5. DOES CHRISTIANITY OFFER A FINAL STAND- 
ARD FOR MORALS? 

The backbone of the Christian moral standard is the Ten 
Commandments. There we have a definite command against 
the worship of idols, profanity, Sabbath desecration, irrev- 
erence to parents, murder, adultery, lying, covetousness. 
As a moral code, perhaps this is the best the world's litera- 
ture affords. But even this is far from sufficient. It does 
not cover nearly all the relationships of life; and morality,, 
based on this code alone, would be barren enough. Jesus 
Christ evidently recognized this fact, so he went beyond the 
law to lay down the precepts of the gospel. He took mo- 
rality out of the single realm of action and pushed it back 
into the realm of motive. He said not only was the man who 
took life a murderer, but even the man who was angry with 
his brother and had murderous thoughts against him was 
guilty of the crime. 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 73 

But no code or set of rules can cover all cases, even 
though that code referred to the specific motives of a man's 
heart. There must be something deeper than this, if the 
moral standard is not to be outgrown. Most of the failures 
of religious sects in the moral realm have arisen from an 
attempt to follow literally a set of rules. But men outgrow 
rules. They advance, but rules do not advance with them ; 
hence it arises that the moral life of the people may be far 
higher than the simple rules by which they are supposed to 
mold their conduct. 

Jesus Christ met this situation by transferring morals 
into the realm of life principles. He said if you are in 
doubt, then do the thing which you would want your neigh- 
bor to do to you. Put yourself in your neighbor's place, and 
ask what you would then think of your proposed action. If 
from this outside point you can wholly approve it, then it 
must be unselfish and worthy. Thus the principle of love 
becomes the determinant of the quality of action. What- 
ever is selfish, whatever will hurt another, even though it 
may apparently serve your own ends, that thing is morally 
wrong. 

In the ethics of Jesus, love is the final standard. No act 
which cannot pass that standard is accounted worthy or 
moral. Every act which is incited by the motive of love, 
although it may fall short of its mark, nevertheless has in 
it the quality of worthiness because it has a worthy motive 
behind it. 

In this light lovelessness is as evil as passion or appetite, 
and one can move away from God as rapidly by the one 
road as by the other. Selfishness is sin, and love is life. 

This gives us at once a final and complete standard for 
morals. The human race being what it is, can never out- 
grow unselfish love ; and by as much as that holy passion 
grows in the human heart, by just so much will the moral 
standards of Jesus be advanced. 



74 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true 
God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." (John 
xvii. 3.) 

"But when he came to himself he said, How many hired servants 
of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish here 
with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto 
him. Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight : I am 
no more worthy to be called thy son : make me as one of thy hired 
servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But while he was 
yet afar off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, 
and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto 
him. Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight : I am no 
more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, 
Bring forth quickly the best robe, and put it on him ; and put a ring- 
on his hand, and shoes on his feet : and bring the fatted calf, and kill 
it, and let us eat, and make merry : for this my son was dead, and is 
alive again ; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." 
(Luke XV. 17-24.) 

"Even so, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the 
angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." (Luke xv. 10.) 



PART 6. WHAT IS SALVATION? 

In the non-Christian religions the most prominent element 
in salvation is freedom from the results of sin. Escape 
from something unpleasant or painful is the heart of their 
message. 

Christian salvation contemplates saving man from the av^- 
ful results of sin, but it goes much deeper than simple free- 
dom from punishment. Sin brings with it not only a sense 
of guilt but a state of guilt and uncleanness. Christian sal- 
vation through repentance and forgiveness removes both 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



75 



the sense of guilt and the uncleanness consequent upon sin. 
(Cf. Study I.) 

But Christian salvation is not simply freedom from sin 
and its guilt, which comes from submitting one's self to the 
life of a forgiving Christ ; it has a positive content in it that 
brings one back into proper relationship with those for 
whom we are made. 

"A person is lost when he gets away from the person to 
whom he belongs and is in danger of not getting back. One 
person may get away from another without being separated 
from him in space. A child who cares nothing for his 
father, and would be equally content to go with one of the 
hundreds of persons passing him and his father on the street, 
is more hopelessly 'lost' to his father than is the child who, a 
block away from his father, stands frightened and crying 
for him."^' 

"If to be lost is to fail to care for God as a Father and for 
men as brothers, then to be 'found' or to be 'saved,' both of 
which were favorite words of Jesus, is to be brought to feel 
a vital, personal interest in God as a Father and in men as 
brothers. It is to take one's proper place in God's family."^ 

To sum up the teachings of studies one and two, to be 
saved, in Christian terminology, means that a man has be- 
come sick of his sin ; has come back to Christ in simple man- 
hood and asked forgiveness; has had his sin forgiven, his 
sense of estrangement removed; has found a new power for 
life ; and has now taken his place in the family of God as a 
true son to his Heavenly Father and as a true brother to 
his fellow-men, and this is Life. No other religion has any 
such fundamental gospel of salvation. 

^Bosworth's "Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles," p. ii6. 
^Ibid., p. Ii8. 



^6 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am 
meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For 
my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matt. xi. 28-30.) 

"Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, 
that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For 
this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Be- 
loved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest 
what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall 
be like him; for we shall see him even as he is." (i John iii. i, 2.) 

"Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say. Rejoice." (Phil, 
iv. 4.) 



PART 7. DOES THE CHRISTIAN LIFE SATISFY THE 
HUMAN SOUL? 

Jesus Christ believed that he could lead men into such an 
acquaintance with his Heavenly Father that this new fel- 
lowship would meet all their spiritual needs. He recognized 
that the supreme need of the human soul was fellowship 
with the divine. He therefore made provision for removing 
the barriers which keep men from such fellowship, and 
made such a revelation of God as has enabled men ever 
since to find a new and growing friendship with a Father 
God. 

Has Christianity satisfied men ? Is there anything to prove 
that Christ was not mistaken in his claims ? 

One of the marvels of history is the spirit of buoyancy 
and joy which pervades the apostolic writings. Here were 
men living in the midst of persecution, hardships, privation ; 
and yet every page of the New Testament glows with the 



DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY. yy 

splendid spirit of rejoicing. It was a real rejoicing in tribu- 
lation. Now this is no stoicism. It is no hardened endur- 
ance of that which cannot be escaped. It is an enthusiastic 
rejoicing which indicates that these men have something 
within which fairly lifts them above physical discomfort. 
It is the victory of a satisfied soul over the inconveniences 
and suffering of a persecuted body. 

I have in my librar}^ a beautiful print of Max's ''Last 
Token," the original of which is in the Metropolitan Art 
Museum, New York. It is the picture of a martyr girl in 
the den with the wild animals. A monster tiger is just 
coming out from his bloody lair by her side. The girl is 
completely oblivious of the animals, and in her face is writ- 
ten that glorious victory of the inner life which made the 
martyrs great. A religion which can give such a peace as 
is written in that beautiful face is the religion for the rest- 
less souls of men. 

Ever since Christ came into the world, men have some- 
how felt that they could have communion with him and with 
God; and through that communion they have come to find 
joy and peace and blessedness. The new gospel of redemp- 
tion which is being written day by day as men come to 
know Jesus Christ is a gospel of rejoicing. If one had space 
one could cite literally hundreds of cases where men have 
found a life of joy and peace through the gospel of Christ. 
The testimony of those wlho are competent witnesses is that 
Christianity does satisfy, and this is the final test of reality. 

I see thee not, I hear thee not. 

Yet art thou oft with me; 
And earth has ne'er so dear a spot 

As where I meet with thee. 

Like some bright dream that comes unsought 

When slumbers o'er me roll, 

Thine image ever fills my thought 

And charms my ravished soul. 

— Roy Palmer. 



STUDY V. 

Christ's Method of Extending the Kingdom. 

(79) 



8o INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY V. CHRIST'S METHOD OF EXTENDING 
THE KINGDOM. 

That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, 
that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our 
hands handled, concerning the Word of life (and the life was mani- 
fested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the 
life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested 
unto us) ; that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you 
also, that ye also may have fellowship with us : yea, and our fellow- 
ship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." (i John i. 
1-3.) 



PART I. INTRODUCED INTO A VALUE THROUGH 

TESTIMONY. 

Men enter into the appreciation of values through the 
testimony of those who have already experienced such val- 
ues. The sum of the world's truth would be small indeed if 
every man had to discover for himself through experience 
each new truth. Through the testimony of experts from a 
thousand different fields, I enter into the possession of values 
which I then verify by experience. 

If I wish to know the facts about electricity I will go to 
Mr. Edison. He tells me that he has in his laboratory proved 
that by using certain chemicals he can produce an electric 
current. By passing this current over wires properly con- 
nected with transmitters and receivers he can talk to me one 
hundred miles away. I at once accept his testimony and, 
taking down the receiver, call up my friend one hundred 
miles distant. I enter into this value through the testimony 
of another. 

The testimony must come from a competent witness. If 
an African from the Upper Congo told me about the marvels 



METHOD OF EXTENDING THE KINGDOM. 8l 

of electricity I might doubt him, for he has had no way of 
testing- this power. In order to be a competent witness one 
must have had first-hand experiences with the facts. 

Testimony is strengthened when a great many men have 
dealt with the same facts and bring back similar reports. 
The oft-repeated experience of a witness brings conviction 
of reality. However, if you alone in all the world have had 
an experience, you wonder if you have been deluded. When 
another man reports the same experience with the same 
facts, you begin to be confident. When a thousand men give 
reports that substantiate your own, you become morally 
certain of your experience. The reality and truth of a 
testimony must be referred to the judgment of all those who 
as experimenters in that realm are competent witnesses. 
W^hen such reality has been well established we at once be- 
gin to act on the report of the witnesses. We enter into 
these values through personal testimony. 

Personal Thought: Have you any 'religious testimony 
which you should be passing on to others ? Have you been 
an experimenter in the laboratory of Christian character? 
6 



82 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY V. CHRIST'S METHOD OF EXTENDING 
THE KINGDOM. 

"But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon 
you : and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea 
and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." (Acts i. 8.) 

"Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing 
them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I command- 
ed you : and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the 
world." (Matt, xxviii. 19, 20.) 



PART 2. CHRIST EXPECTED MEN TO REPORT THEIR 
EXPERIENCE TO OTHERS. 

Christ wrote no book in which he set forth his teachings. 
He built no monuments to commemorate his deeds. He 
asked no biographer to write his Hfe history. And yet Christ 
confidently expected that his kingdom should continue to 
grow until he had universal dominion. This seems a strange, 
loose method of bringing in a universal kingdom. Yet he 
had provided an effectual way of spreading this message. 

He took twelve men to be with him. He taught them 
some of his own experience with his Father God. He helped 
them to catch something of the message of his life, then he 
sent them out to bear testimony to their experience. He 
expected each disciple to introduce the men next to him into 
this greatest of all life values. Then he expected each of 
these new experimenters to introduce in turn the people 
whom they touched into this same fundamental value. 

Christ expected each Christian man to become a compe- 
tent witness as to the reality of the God friendship. He ex- 
pected that the growing number of men who had gone into 
the laboratory of Christian life and found a new power, a 



METHOD OF EXTENDING THE KINGDOM. 83 

new peace, a new joy — he expected them to come out and 
report what they had found. To put it plainly, Christ chose 
the most fundamental and the most scientific method of 
spreading his kingdom — personal testimony. 

Christ himself used this fundamental method. In the 
midst of his busy life, he was never too hurried to sit down 
with a single soul and share with it his sense of God. Nic- 
odemus, the Samaritan woman, Zaccheus, the blind man, 
and many others went out from Christ's presence with a 
new sense of God because of Christ's simple personal testi- 
mony. 

Personal Thought: Have you ever taken the trouble to 
share with your nearest friend the experience you have had 
with God? 



84 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY V. CHRIST'S METHOD OF EXTENDING 

THE KINGDOM. 

■ "But an angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise and 
go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem 
unto Gaza : the same is desert. And he arose and went : and behold, 
a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen 
of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to 
Jerusalem to worship; and he was returning and sitting in his char- 
iot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said unto 
Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran to 
him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, Understand- 
est thou what thou readest? And he said. How can I, except some 
one shall guide me ? And he besought Philip to come up and sit with 
him. Now the passage of scripture which he was reading was this : 

He was led as a sheep to the slaughter ; 

And as a lamb before his shearer is dumb. 

So he openeth not his mouth. 

In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: 

His generation who shall declare? 

For his life is taken from the earth. 

And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom 
speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other? And 
Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this scripture, preached 
unto him Jesus." (Acts viii. 26-35.) 



PART 3. TESTIMONY THE METHOD OF EARLY 
CHURCHES. 

Here is the simple story of a man who had learned in the 
laboratory of Christ the meaning of the God friendship. He 
meets a man who needs an interpreter. He at once gets 
into the chariot and, through his own experience leads the 
eunuch into an appreciation of the value of Christ. It is a 
case of simple personal testimony. 



METHOD OF EXTENDING THE KINGDOM. 85 

Rev. Mr. Lamb in his little volume, "Won by One," points 
out the fact that in the brief narrative of Christ's healing 
ministry twenty of the persons healed were brought to him 
by some individual — that is, through some personal worker. 
He also points out that perhaps none of these persons would 
ever have come to Christ had they not been brought by some 
other person. 

The whole method of the early Church seems to have 
been one of personal testimony. One can imagine that St. 
Paul, in the Roman prison or confined in his own house, 
preached Christ to many a soldier. He bore simple testi- 
mony to the power that had come into his own life through 
contact with Jesus. 

This method of work was followed in the medieval 
Church. It is reported of the Waldensians : "He who has 
been a disciple for seven days looks out some one whom he 
may teach in turn, so that there is a continual increase." 

This is the method of Christian work most in favor in the 
foreign field to-day. Mr. Mott in his latest book, "The De- 
cisive Hour of Christian Missions," says: "It is probable 
that a larger proportion of Korean Christians have won oth- 
ers to Christ than of those of the Church of any other land." 
(P. yy.) Speaking of the same type of work in the Pres- 
byterian Mission in Honan, China, he says: "So fully have 
they accepted the practice of leading others to Christ as a 
necessary work of genuineness on the part of the convert 
that, as a mission, they have decided not to baptize any per- 
son unless he has led some one to Christ." (P. 179.) 

Personal Thought: If this test were applied to me, what 
would be my Christian standing ? 



86 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY V. CHRIST'S METHOD OF EXTENDING 
THE KINGDOM. 

"Now when they beheld the boldness of Peter and John, and had 
perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they mar- 
veled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with 
Jesus. And seeing the man that was healed standing with them, they 
could say nothing against it." (Acts iv. 13, 14.) 



PART 4. TESTIMONY THROUGH THE LIFE. 

The final thing about testimony is the character of the 
witness. Is he one who has had experience with the facts 
and can he be trusted to report truly his experience ? In the 
case of Christian testimony, character is of the essence of 
the experience of the witness; therefore any lack of char- 
acter disqualifies us as reliable witnesses. No man's testi- 
mony concerning the truth of Christ's gospel is vaHd unless 
his character prove the facts of his report. 

Herein, however, lies the greatest power of the Christian 
witness. His report is not simply his words, but his life is 
the living testimony. W. W. Crutchfield was the first stu- 
dent Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association 
at the University of Texas. When I visited that institution 
during his labors there one man, reported to be an atheist, 
came to see me about his life. He frankly told me he had 
claimed to be an atheist, but he said: "I am not one now 
since Crutchfield came here, for he has a life that no ordinary 
power can explain." 

At Furman University one day the captain of the baseball 
team and all his men came to my meeting wearing their suits, 
being on the way out to practice. The captain was a fine 
athlete and an influential student, but not a Christian ; in fact, 



METHOD OF EXTENDING THE KINGDOM. 87 

quite profane. I asked the president of the Young Men's 
Christian Association to bring him for an interview. The 
president at first refused, saying he had no influence. But I 
insisted, and he brought him after the evening meeting. 
When the captain and I were alone I said I was glad he had 
come, for he had influence in college and he ought to be a 
Christian so that his influence would be in the right direc- 
tion. His first word was: "There is certainly something in 
Qiristianity, and if I could be as good a man as the man who 
brought me to see you I would become a Christian at once." 
A man's character is of the very essence of his testimony. 

We do not need to be perfect, but we need to have that 
in us which indicates we are moving Godward, if we expect 
to bear successful testimony. 

The best revelation of truth is the Hfe, hence Christ said : 
"Ye are the light of the world ;" and Paul said : "Ye are my 
epistles known and read of all men." 

IVJ^ay every soul that touches mine, 

Be it the slightest contact, get therefrom some good. 

Some little grace, one kindly thought, 

One aspiration yet unfelt, one bit of courage for the darkening sky, 

One gleam of faith to brave the thickening ills of life. 

One glimpse of brighter skies beyond the gathering mists, 

To make this life worth while, and heaven a surer heritage. 

— Bosworth's "Life of Christ." 



88 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY V. CHRIST'S METHOD OF EXTENDING 
THE KINGDOM. 

"So thou, son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house 
of Israel; therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them 
warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, 
thou shalt surely die, and thou dost not speak to warn the wicked 
from his way; that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his 
blood will I require at thy hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the 
wicked of his way to turn from it, and he turn not from his way; 
he shall die in his iniquity, but thou has delivered thy soul. And 
thou, son of man, say unto the house of Israel : Thus ye speak, 
saying, Our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we pine 
away in them ; how then can we live ? Say unto them, As I live, saith 
the Lord Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; 
but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye 
from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel? (Ezek. 
xxxiii. 7-11.) 



PART 5. IS PERSONAL TESTIMONY NECESSARY? 

There is no greater crime committed by men than to have 
truth in their possession and refuse to pass it on. We are 
custodians of the blessings of life. Even as low a form of 
power as money cannot any longer be used entirely selfishly. 
The world demands that its men of great wealth shall use 
such wealth in a friendly spirit. Much more is this true of 
intellectual achievement. A physician who knew a com- 
plete remedy for tuberculosis but refused to pass it on would 
be branded as the enemy of society. Few of us realize that 
the world needs a message of God more than it needs 
money or intellectual truth. It is an awful thing for a man 
to be the sepulcher of a real spiritual message. 

Many men will never really hear the Christian message 
unless giveii by us personally. Thousands never go to 



METHOD OF EXTENDING THE KINGDOM. 89 

church. I\Iany of those who do go have their minds some- 
where else during the service. They never read the Bible, 
they rarely read any religious books or papers. Their minds 
are simply never arrested by the thought of God. There is 
only one way of getting the attention of such persons, and 
that is through personal work. If you sit down by their 
side you can get their attention, and perhaps they can be 
won. 

There is still another reason for doing personal work. 
Some men need counsel and encouragement which they 
cannot get in public service. They must have the chance 
to tell out their heart needs. They will never be won other- 
wise. After a meeting in one of the State institutions 
in the South I met a man out on the steps of the building 
where the meeting had been held. It was dark, and I could 
not see what kind of a man he was. He said he had heard 
me speak, and I ventured to ask him if he was a Christian. 
He replied in the negative. I asked him if he would not go 
back to the room with me to talk it through. He gladly 
accepted, saying that was the thing he was hoping I would 
ask him to do. I found him discouraged and defeated. He 
told me a story which could never have come out in a public 
meeting, and without the knowledge of which I could never 
have helped him. After a half hour we bowed together in 
prayer and he gave his heart to Jesus Christ. Many men 
will never be won unless some one meet them sympathetically 
and help them find Christ. 

Let me live in a house by the side of the road, 

Where the race of men go by — 
The men who are good and the men v/ho are bad, 

As good and as bad as I. 
I would not sit in the scorner's seat 

Nor hurl the cynic's ban ; 
Let me live in the house by the side of the road 

And be a friend to man. 

Foss's "The House by the Side of the Road." 



90 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY V. CHRIST'S METHOD OF EXTENDING 
THE KINGDOM. 

"He answered, The man that is called Jesus made clay, and anoint- 
ed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to Siloam, and wash : so I went 
away and washed, and I received sight. . . . They say there- 
fore unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of him, in that he 
opened thine eyes? And he said, He is a prophet. ... He 
therefore answered, Whether he is a sinner, I know not: one thing 
I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. . . . The man 
answered and said unto them. Why, herein is the marvel, that ye 
know not whence he is, and yet he opened mine eyes. We know 
that God heareth not sinners : but if any man be a worshiper of God, 
and do his will, him he heareth. Since the world began it was 
never heard that any one opened the eyes of a man born blind. If 
this man were not from God, he could do nothing." (John ix. ii, 17, 
25, 30-33.) 



PART 6. THE NATURE OF OUR TESTIMONY. 

Our report must never have the air of superiority about 
it. Personal character is not a thing about which one dare 
freely boast. To bear personal testimony does not mean 
that the worker assumes to be perfect. It does, however, 
mean that something has come into our lives which we did 
not have before, and that something has made a difference. 
Our report will be simply a statement of our experience and 
what we have found coming into our life because of that 
experience. 

First we will say, perhaps, that we felt we were wrong, 
we were dissatisfied and unhappy ; but now we feel that the 
wrong has been forgiven and we are happy. Secondly, we 
will say, perhaps, that before we found ourselves unable to 
win victory, but that now we find it increasingly easier to 
overcome; not that we have attained, but that we are at- 
taining. Then we will say that new values have come to us. 



METHOD OF EXTENDING THE KINGDOM. 91 

Honesty and truthfulness and the common virtues have new 
meaning". Then we will say we are growing more sympa- 
thetic with men. Somehow the fellowship we have with 
Christ has made life different. Formerly we did not care 
much for men, but now we increasingly love men and want 
to help them. Lastly, we can say we are beginning to find 
new joy in fellowship with Christ. When we put ourselves 
in his presence we find peace and satisfaction. All this has 
come because we so related ourselves to the forces of the 
spiritual kingdom that we are able to find its truth — that is, 
we took Jesus Christ at his word ; we surrendered ourselves 
to him, and this has been the result. Like chemists in the 
laboratory, we have taken the theory that Christ was real, 
we have acted on it, and the results have proved him to be 
what he claims. 

This is the simple, straightforward report of an experience 
with Christ. We may not be able to say all of these things. 
We may be new Christians, and only part of this testimony 
consciously true with us ; we will therefore report as a 
scientist reports, that we have found some facts and are 
continuing our work in the Christian laboratory. We ex- 
pect our fund of experience to grow. 

Needs must there be one way, our chief, 
Best way of worship : let me strive 
To find it, and when found, contrive 
My fellows also take their share. 
This constitutes my earthly care : 
God's is above it and distinct. 
For I, a man, with men am linked, 
And not a brute with brutes ; no good 
That I experience must remain 
Unshared. — Browning's "Christmas Eve." 



92 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY V. CHRIST'S METHOD OF EXTENDING 
THE KINGDOM. 

*'Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savor, 
wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but 
to be cast out and trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of 
the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light 
a lamp, and put it under the bushel, but on the stand ; and it shineth 
unto all that are in the house. Even so let your light shine before 
men ; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father 
who is in heaven." (Matt. v. 13-16.) 

"One of the two that heard John speak, and followed him, was 
Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He findeth first his own brother 
Simon, and saith unto him. We have found the Messiah (which is, 
being interpreted, Christ). He brought him unto Jesus. Jesus 
looked upon him, and said. Thou art Simon the son of John : thou 
shalt be called Cephas (which is by interpretation, Peter)." (John 
i. 40-42.) 



PART 7. IS PERSONAL TESTIMONY EFFECTIVE? 

Many men would gladly give their personal testimony but 
for the fact that they feel it is useless. They consider them- 
selves amateurs, immature experimenters in the spiritual 
realm, and they doubt the effectiveness of their report. 
Such men should remember that it is not the extent of their 
experience but the reality of such experience that counts. 
If I wish to interest you in chemistry, I do not attempt to lay 
before you at one time the whole achievements of that won- 
derful science. I choose out one fact, such as the combina- 
tion of oxygen and hydrogen to form water. I make clear 
to you the process and the practical uses to which these 
processes may be put. That convinces you that chemistry is 
worth the while, and you begin experimenting in chemistry 
yourself. Similarly, to introduce a man to one fundamental 
reality of Christian life will set him working in this realm 
for himself. If I can show by experience how Christ has 
given me a sense of forgiveness, I may not need to do more. 

This is precisely what any genuine testimony is apt to do. 
Men are all too ready for a message of reality, and if you 
state plainly your experience they are readily influenced. In 
one of our colleges recently a man whose brother is a col- 



METHOD OF EXTENDING THE KINGDOM. 93 

le^e man and now on the mission field, came up and asked 
me if I knew his brother. I replied affirmatively, and a few 
words were passed. There were a number around, so I 
asked him to wait a moment. When I was a little free I 
said to this student that I hoped he was a Christian. ''No, 
he was not ; but he knew he ought to be." I spent five min- 
utes with him, and then asked him to keep this in mind as 
he worked in the shops that afternoon. That night, when I 
called for those who had decided to be Christians, he was 
one of the first to stand. All he needed was a simple word 
of testimony. 

In a Western State university there was a fine fellow who, 
a professor told me, was considered the greatest athlete in 
the State. He was clean and manly, but not a Christian. 
I asked the secretary to bring him to me for an interview. 
He came, and I presented in brief outline what it would mean 
for him to be a Christian. I tried to make clear the reason- 
ableness of Christian life. In twenty minutes he gave me his 
hand and said: 'T will give my life to Jesus Christ, will join 
the Church, and go to work." He just needed a word of 
personal testimony. He had been hearing sermons and ad- 
dresses for years, but Christianity had never been presented 
to him personally. 

At the University of Illinois another splendid athlete came 
for conference. He was in doubt about the reality of Chris- 
tian experience. A simple report of what I and thousands 
of other men had found to be real, put in terms which he 
could understand, and he immediately said: "I will try." 
An hour later in a decision meeting he was the first man to 
rise to declare his decision to be a follower of Christ. 

Is personal testimony effective? H. Clay Trumbull in 
his "Individual Work for Individuals" claims that he knows 
of more people won to Christ through his personal testi- 
mony than through all his public ministry. And yet he was 
a great public speaker with exceptionally large opportu- 
nities. Rev. John Timothy Stone, pastor of the Brown Me- 
morial Church, in Baltimore, now pastor of the Fourth Pres- 
byterian Church in Chicago, a man who has had exceptional 
opportunity for the public preaching of the gospel, bears 
similar testimony in his volume, ''Recruiting Men for Christ." 
Personal testimony has always been effective, but perhaps 
never so much as now, when men are searching for reality 
as never before. 



STUDY VI. 

Why Men Neglect to Bear Personal Testimony. 

(95) 



96 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VI. WHY MEN NEGLECT TO BEAR PER- 
SONAL TESTIMONY. 

"But after certain days, Felix came with Drusilla, his wife, who 
was a Jewess, and sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the 
faith in Christ Jesus. And as he reasoned of righteousness, and 
self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was terrified, and an- 
swered, Go thy way for this time ; and when I have a convenient 
season, I will call thee unto me.' (Acts xxiv. 24, 25.) 



PART I. WE SHRINK FROM ALL PERSONAL CONVER- 
SATION. 

Men naturally shrink from all personal conversation. The 
man who asks personal questions may easily become a nui- 
sance. The man who tells you all his business is a bore. We 
like neither to open our hearts to all men nor to have them 
open their hearts to us. The sacredness of personality must 
not be forgotten. Even the closest friendship does not al- 
low us to overstep the bounds of personality. The man who 
uses his friendship as a key to unlock the secret chambers 
of your heart against your will is not a real friend, for he 
destroys the sanctity of your private life. These facts, 
which are very real, make many men hesitate to talk per- 
sonally about Christ. This is not peculiar to Christian 
testimony. We hesitate to talk to a man about his personal 
affairs or his personal manners; indeed, about anything per- 
sonal. Many Christian workers hesitate to raise money 
for Christian causes because such money can be gotten only 
through personal association. 

But there is another side to this question. The very fact 
that a man's personality is sacred makes it unbearable for 
me to stand by and see that personality robbed of its high- 



NEGLECT OF PERSONAL TESTIMONY. 97 

est development. If a man's personality were a common- 
place thing, no one need take the trouble to become inter- 
ested in its upbuilding. Men who refuse to bear personal 
testimony either have nothing to report or else they do not 
realize how important it is to help the other man develop his 
soul. It is the very sacredness of personality which calls 
out our personal report. 

Some have tried to convince themselves that no man has 
a right to try to mold the personal life of another. Let us 
grant it. What would it mean? It would mean that no 
minister could ever preach again, for preaching is an at- 
tempt to help others see life as the preacher sees it. No 
man could teach any longer, for the teacher's life is not sim- 
ply dealing out cold facts. Every fact is enveloped in the 
atmosphere of the teacher's personality, and of necessity 
molds the life of the student. No poet could write again, 
for poetry, real poetry, is the pouring out of the soul of 
man, and it must of necessity affect life. No artist could 
ever paint again, for that is just his attempt to interpret the 
meaning of life. Personal testimony as we use it is just 
carrying into the most important realm the message of the 
preacher, the teacher, the poet, the artist. 

This testimony need not be impertinent and prying. If I 
have found a value in a great poem, it is the joy of my life 
to pass that value on. This is intensely personal; it is the 
giving to you the blessing of my own soul. If I have en- 
joyed a great picture, it is perfectly natural that I try to 
interpret that picture for you. If I have a great friend- 
ship, my most natural desire is to introduce my other 
friends into the delights of this fellowship. This is in- 
tensely personal, but it is not intrusion. Personal testimony 
is the simple sharing of that which we have with another. 
If done in the spirit of humility and love, it cannot be con- 
sidered an impertinence. 



98 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY VI. WHY MEN NEGLECT TO BEAR PER- 
SONAL TESTIMONY. 

"And Moses said unto Jehovah, O, Lord, I am not eloquent, 
neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant; for 
I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. And Jehovah said unto 
him. Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh a man dumb, 
or deaf, or seeing, or blind? is it not I, Jehovah? Now therefore 
go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt 
speak. And he said, O, Lord, send I pray thee, by the hand of him 
whom thou wilt send " (Ex. jv. 10-13.) 



PART 2. WE ARE LACKING IN KNOWLEDGE. 

One of the glorious things about Christianity consists in 
the fact that its reality is not proved by logic, but by life. 
Experience is the final word. Hence it arises that many 
men who have had a genuine experience with Christ are 
not able to give clear expression to what has happened in 
their souls. The preceding studies have been written to 
help such persons to give expression to the reality of which 
they are aware. 

There are other people who are not satisfied with expe- 
rience; they want to go behind that and find the basis of 
that experience. Two of the following studies will be given 
to the problem of reality, or what truth is behind these ex- 
periences. 

To-day I wish to urge three distinct lines of preparation. 
First, every Christian should study how others have been 
used in leading men to Christ. Secure H. Clay Trumbull's 
^'Individual Work for Individuals." You can read it 
through on a Sabbath afternoon. It will indicate how he 
dealt with many different persons. 



NEGLECT OF PERSONAL TESTIMONY. 99 

Every Christian should, secondly, study the New Testa- 
ment anew with this thought in minJ. Read a whole Gospel 
on a Sabbath afternoon to see how Christ and his disciples 
worked with different types of individuals. A Gospel can 
be read completely in two hours. We need for our own 
lives to know more about what Christ taught as the essence 
of Christianity. 

Thirdly, I would like to suggest that you begin the habit 
of having a few moments for Bible study and prayer each 
morning before you go to your day's tasks. Keep in your 
Bible a list of persons for whom you are praying. Some one 
has said that we have no right to talk to a man about his 
life until we have prayed for him. You cannot long con- 
tinue these processes of preparation without beginning to 
share your message with others. 

Men and women lightly excuse themselves from personal 
work on the basis of insufficient knowledge. I very se- 
riously raise the question to-day whether that is a legitimate 
excuse which God can or will accept. This matter is so im- 
portant that no Christian dare be either an idler or a bun- 
gler. We are duty bound as Christians to learn to help 
others. God will accept no plea of ignorance. 

For what are men better than sheep or goats 

That nourish a blind life within the brain, 

If knowing God they lift not hands of prayer 

Both for themselves and for those who call them friend? 

For so the whole round earth is every way 

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 

— Tennyson's "The Passing of Arthur.'* 



lOO INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VI. WHY MEN NEGLECT TO BEAR PER- 
SONAL TESTIMONY. 

"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that 
bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tid- 
ings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy 
God reigneth ! The voice of thy watchmen ! they lift up the voice, 
together do they sing; for they shall see eye to eye, when Jehovah 
returneth to Zion." (Isa. Hi. 7, 8.) 

"When Jesus saw him lying, and knew that he had been a long 
time in that case, he saith unto him, Wouldest thou be made whole? 
The sick man answered him. Sir, I have no man, when the water is 
troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another 
steppeth down before me." (John v. 6, 7. ) 



PART 3. FEAR THAT MEN WILL RESENT OUR TESTI- 
MONY 

IMany Christians fear to speak to another person about the 
Christ friendship lest it will be resented. This, however, 
assumes that we are forcing on others that which is not worth 
having. You do not fear to give a friend a beautiful Christ- 
mas present, sharing with him your blessings of life. But 
you do hesitate to share with him your experience with Him 
who made the Christmas and gave to it all its present signifi- 
cance. Instead of fearing to share with others, we should 
rejoice to do so. 

*'How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him 
that bringeth good tidings." 

The fact is, that men do not resent this simple testimony. 
I have talked personally with I suppose thousands of college 
men in the last ten years. In all these years I have had only 
two men who resented what I said. One of these was asked 
to come under false pretenses. He was told I sent for him, 
and I had not, for I did not know him. He became very 
angry, and I do not wonder at it. But somehow God 
blessed the interview, and the second man I met on the 



NEGLECT OF PERSONAL TESTIMONY. loi 

campus the next year was this man. He said he could not 
get away from the interview, but had become a Christian 
and joined the Presbyterian Church. 

Other men w;ho have made it a practice to talk with men 
about the meaning of the Christ friendship have borne the 
same testimony. 

My observation proves that men will deeply appreciate 
your thought of them. A Japanese student at Yale went 
with his fellow-students up to the Northfield Student Con- 
ference. One of our secretaries discovered he was not a 
Christian and went to him to talk it over. The Japanese stu- 
dent said he had wanted to talk that through with some one, 
but no student had opened the subject. He said he had even 
come to Northfield hoping that in the atmosphere of the 
Conference some of them would talk with him. But no man 
approached him. ''Sir, I have no man, when the water is 
troubled, to put m,e into the pool." This is the despair of 
many a hungry soul. They are about us on every hand, 
waiting for us to help them into that life which we say is 
blessed. They will not resent it; rather they are waiting 
and expecting that we shall say a word. 

Some years ago, at Vanderbilt University in a Sunday 
afternoon meeting of the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion, Fletcher Brockman, then a student, was the leader. 
Brockman tells of how during the service one student asked 
for prayer. After the meeting Brockman went with him 
out on the pike for a long walk, expecting to talk with him 
about his Christian life. But Brockman was afraid and 
kept putting it off until the walk was ended and nothing said. 
About a month later this man openly confessed Christ and 
Brockman took his hand and told him how glad he was for 
the decision. Brockman said the man looked him squarely 
in the face and said : "Yes, Brock ; but you are the man who 
would have let me go to hell. That Sunday afternoon we 
walked together I hoped every minute you would offer to 
help me, but you did not." 

Meditation: Do you suppose any of your friends ever 
think it strange that you do not share this supreme interest 
of your life with them.? 



102 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VI. WHY MEN NEGLECT TO BEAR PER- 
SONAL TESTIMONY. 

"And Jehovah said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people 
that are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their task- 
masters ; for I know their sorrows ; and I am come down to deliver 
them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out 
of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with 
milk and honey ; unto the place of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and 
the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. And 
now, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me : more- 
over I have seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress 
them. Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that 
thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of 
Egypt. And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto 
Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of 
Egypt?" (Ex. iii. 7-II.) 

"And Moses answered and said. But, behold, they will not believe 
me, nor hearken unto my voice ; for they will say, Jehovah hath not 
appeared unto thee." (Ex. iv. i.) 



PART 4. PERSONAL TESTIMONY REVEALS THE WEAK- 
NESS OF THE WITNESS. 

No man can give a greater message than he really lives. 
Emerson said : "What you are thunders so loud in my ears 
that I cannot hear what you say." In our last study we 
called attention to the fact that a man's life is a part of his 
testimony. Moses did not want to go back to Egypt because 
he had left an unsavory record behind. He doubtless feared 
the people would not follow him because he was a murderer. 
No man of us can bear his best testimony when unforgiven 
sin remains in his life. 

Personal testimony tests the genuineness of life. Here, 
face to face with men, all that is weak comes to the surface. 



NEGLECT OF PERSONAL TESTIMONY. 103 

We cannot hide behind the protection of a pulpit or a teach- 
er's desk or an editor's table. We are face to face with life. 
In that close relationship men can look into our very souls. 
We cannot hide the weaknesses there. It is this that some- 
times makes us shrink from speaking to the other man. 

When a man is speaking to a crowd he can uce general 
terms, but when one begins talking to an individual he must 
be specific. If he has no real experience to relate, he cannot 
cover up that weakness. Generalities will do for an exhorta- 
tion, but will never pass for personal testimony. 

Personal Prayer: "O Gk)d, take out of my life the weak- 
nesses and sin which rob me of power for service." 



104 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VI. WHY MEN NEGLECT TO BEAR PER- 
SONAL TESTIMONY. 

"And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, 
and who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I; send me." (Isa. 
vi. 8.) 



PART 5. WE WANT TO SERVE IN THE EASIEST WAY. 

In this day of organization it is easy to get into the habit 
of doing our religious work by proxy. It is so convenient 
to send a check to the Associated Charities and expect them 
to see that all the poor are cared for. It is convenient and 
soothing to drop a quarter into the Salvation Army kettle 
just to make it boil well for some poor wretch. How very 
convenient to put five or ten or a hundred dollars into the 
Christmas purse which will send coal and provisions to chil- 
dren who would not otherwise have any Christmas. 

All this is good, but not if it makes us feel satisfied that 
we have done our part. The supreme need of men and 
women and little children is not dinners or coal or clothes. 
They need sympathy and love and fellowship. They need 
courage and character. You cannot send these through the 
mail. They can be given only by contagion of personality. 
The slow, hard, uncomfortable process is to learn to know 
the heart needs of a few of these. Know them so well that 
you can meet their hunger of soul. Then you will have to 
give your very soul with your money. 

Not a few religious workers are also trying to do their 
Christian work in the easiest way. They find it much easier 
to give a public address or to preach to a crowd than to 
hunt out men one by one and try to lead them into fellow- 
ship with Christ. 'Tt requires," said Bossuet, "more faith 
and courage to say two words face to face with one single 



NEGLECT OF PERSONAL TESTIMONY. 105 

sinner than from the pulpit to rebuke two or three thou- 
sand persons, ready to listen to everything on condition of 
forgetting all." 

What we need is more of the giving of ourselves with 
our Christian work. It is men and not things, life and not 
speeches, that people need. This is personal work, and will 
lead others to Christ. This is costly, but it pays. 

Not what we give but what we share. 
For the gift without the giver is bare ; 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me. 

— Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal." 



io6 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VI. WHY MEN NEGLECT TO BEAR PER- 
SONAL TESTIMONY. 

"As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one; there is 
none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God." 
(Rom. iii. lo, ii.) 

"For what is a man profited, if he gain the whole world, and lose 
or forfeit his own self?" (Luke ix. 25.) 

"And cast ye out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness : 
there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth." (Matt. 
XXV. 30.) 



PART 6. WE DO NOT REALIZE THE DESPERATE NEED 

OF MEN. 

Jesus believed that men who were not associated with 
him were in desperate need. A man might have abundance 
of worldly goods or learning or social position, but if he did 
not know Christ he was irretrievably lost. This thought 
made him weep over the inhabitants of Jerusalem. It was 
the sense of the sin and need of men that weighed down on 
his soul as he hung on the cross, until his heart broke with 
the agony. It seems practically certain, from a scientific 
standpoint, that Jesus did not die of physical pain alone, but 
of mental suffering. He saw as none of us see the real con- 
dition of men. He looked beneath the veneer of wealth and 
culture and power into the dark and lonely depths of sin- 
sick souls. 

If we could get away from the conception of life as ma- 
terial prosperity, we would see men as they really are, 
walking about in all their barrenness and wretchedness and 
sin. Browning represents Lazarus as having an entirely 
new perspective of life because he had seen into eternity 
and caught the real standard of values. Discourse of armies 



NEGLECT OF PERSONAL TESTIMONY. loy 

meant nothing- to him. The death of his child seemed not 
to touch him, but the sin of his child startled him into agony. 
Most of us are blind to the real needs of men. We do 
not know their battles and w,e pass them lightly by, suppos- 
ing all within is as calm as a summer sea. But hidden from 
us is the awful struggle of a sin-sick soul. 

"We smile, but O, great Christ, our cries 
To thee from tortured souls arise." 

I only wish I could take each reader with me to any one 
of the colleges I visit and let him hear the call that comes 
from some of the strongest men in college — a call for a power 
by which they may win victory. It would break the heart of 
any man to know the awful struggle in the lives of these 
men. 

In a Virginia college one man recently told me of his ter- 
rible battle with drink. In a Western university another 
man, within a month of this writing, told me of his desper- 
ate struggle with passion. In the past two months I have 
talked with a number of men in the midst of a battle with 
doubt. On every hand there are men who are battling with 
selfishness and losing the battle. If men only realized what 
a common thing temptation is ! If we only saw the forces 
that are destroying character ! If we only saw as Christ saw 
— that sin means separation from God, and all men who are 
not Christ's are lost — we would all be personal workers. 

Prayer: ''O God, help me to be sensitive to the suffering 
and sin of the world. Even though it be painful, keep me 
keenly conscious of the needs of men. Help me to point 
men to the Christ who alone can give peace." 



io8 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY VI. WHY MEN NEGLECT TO BEAR PER- 
SONAL TESTIMONY. 

"Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man 
of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips : 
for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts. . . . And 
I heard the voice of the Lord, saying. Whom shall I send, and who 
will go for us? Then I said, Here am I; send me." (Isa. vi. 5, 8.) 

"Surely the Lord Jehovah will do nothing, except he reveal his 
secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath roared; who 
will not fear? The Lord Jehovah hath spoken; who can but proph- 
esy?" (Amos iii. 7, 8.) 

PART 7. OUR RELATION TO CHRIST IS NOT SUCH AS TO 
BEGET A SENSE OF MESSAGE. 

"Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?" These are the tri- 
umphant words of the Apostle Paul. They were his de- 
fense when attacked, as they were also his inspiration in 
the midst of difficulty. This was the motive power of his 
life. His soul fairly glowed when he thought how near 
Jesus was to him. It was Paul's sense of fellowship with 
Christ which gave him his sense of message. 

Isaiah's sense of message came from a vision of God-. 
He felt he knew God and his righteousness, and at once he 
heard the call to service. 

Amos, that wonderful shepherd prophet; who in the lone- 
ly hills of Tekoa had learned to know God, had a sense of 
message. Cornill has called Amos one of the greatest 
figures in the history of the human mind. He was simply 
a shepherd, but he had met God out there as he watched 
his sheep under the clear Judean sky. Amos could not re- 
fuse to speak. God had spoken to him, and he must go up 
to Israel and try to win back God's people. If ever you see 
a human being living in sin, if somehow you know that God 



NEGLECT OF PERSONAL TESTIMONY. 109 

yearns to save that being from a ruined life, do not turn 
away from the thought ; it is God's call to you for service. 

The personal worker must have a sense of message. He 
must have gone into the spiritual laboratory as did Paul and 
Isaiah and Amos, and, having met God, then he must come 
out to tell the waiting people. The greatest need of our day 
is for men with an overwhelming sense of message — such a 
sense of message that they cannot get away from it — men 
who have experienced a reality so tremendous that they 
must make their report. 

He who has such a sense of message will be a personal 
worker. If we have met God we will want to lead others to 
meet him too. If we have not such a sense of God's near- 
ness, then we should put ourselves daily in his presence 
through Bible study and prayer until we begin to know that 
he is real. 

O could I tell, ye surely would believe it — 

O could I only say what I have seen ; 
How should I tell or how can ye receive it, 

How till he bringeth you where I have been? 

Therefore, O Lord, I will not fail nor falter; 

Nay, but I ask it, nay, but I desire, 
Lay on my lips thine embers off the altar, 

Seal with the sting, and furnish with the fire. 

Quick in a moment, infinite forever. 

Send an arousal better than I pray : 
Give me a grace upon the faint endeavor, 

Souls for my hire and Pentecost to-day. 

—Myers's "St. Paul." 



STUDY VII. 

How TO Awaken the Indifferent and SELF-SATisFiEa 

(HI) 



112 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY VII. HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFER- 
ENT AND SELF-SATISFIED. 

"A certain man made a great supper; and he bade many: and 
he sent forth his servant at supper time to say to them that were 
bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. And they all with 
one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have 
bought a field, and I must needs go out and see it ; I pray thee have 
me excused." (Luke xiv. 16-18.) 



PART I. CAUSES OF INDIFFERENCE. 

Indifference seems to arise from one of three causes. 
First, a man may assume a forced indifference because he 
dreads to face the results of his sin. This applies to many. 
Once at Howard College, Alabama, a student told me the 
story of a very sinful life. I asked him to go back to his 
room, lock the door, and there alone face his sin in the 
presence of God. He said he could not do that. "But," I 
said, "that cannot hurt you, and it certainly is the fair thing 
to do." "Yes," he said; "but I dare not be alone with God 
in the presence of my sins for half an hour." Many are 
afraid to be alone and face their sins. They assume an in- 
difference because their conscience hurts them when they 
allow themselves to think seriously. 

Then there is an indifference of preoccupation. Business 
Is so pressing that many a man never thinks about religious 
affairs. It is practically impossible to get his attention for 
religious thought even on the Sabbath. Or if the person with 
whom you are dealing be in social life, the engagements are 
so constant and exacting that religious life has little chance. 
Or if he be a student, athletics and fraternities and socials 
and study take every hour of his time. Many men are not 
intentionally irreligious, but they are preoccupied. 



HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFERENT. 113 

There is a third type of indifference due to undervakiation. 
Many people, men especially, do not think religion has any 
real message. They think it is a diversion of the mystical, 
but as for practical power it has none. Religion has so long 
been taught with preponderating emotional elements that 
men with battles to fight and big things to do frequently 
feel they can well afford to do without it. One can readily 
see there is a great difference in the three types, and the 
method of work in dealing with each will be different from 
that of the other two. 

Personal Thought: Has your indifference to personal work 
been due to undervaluation of the power of religion to help 
the other man ? 
8 



114 



INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VII. HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFER- 
ENT AND SELF-SATISFIED. 

"Be noble, and the nobleness that lies in others, sleeping, but 
never dead, shall rise in majesty to meet thine own." ^ 

"The office of a friend is to make us do what we can." 

"As in water face answereth to face. 
So the heart of man to man." 

(Prov. xxvii. 19.) 



PART 2. THE CONTAGION OF CHARACTER. 

Character is caught and not taught ; it is the precept both 
of psychology and sociology. We gain character by con- 
tact with character. Henry Drummond used to say he be- 
came a part of every man he met, and every man he met 
became a part of him. When Coleridge was asked the 
secret of his life he simply answered : 'T had a friend." 

The most powerful influence that can be brought to bear 
on an indifferent man is the personality of a God-filled soul. 
Become a friend to your indifferent person. Spend some 
time with him.. Do not fear to let him know the great, deep 
things in which you are interested. If he really believes in 
you he will soon begin to believe in your power of life. If 
you cannot become a friend to the indifferent person, get 
some other strong person to do so. 

The greatest testimony for Christ is the consistent daily 
life of a Christlike person, followed with an open report of 
how that life has grown. When the great French skeptic 
visited the mystic Fenelon he came away saying: 'Tf I stay 
here much longer I will be a Christian in spite of myself." 

I once had a little mannerism from which I tried to get 
free. But like most habits, it was not easily broken. One 
day a friend, for whom I had great admiration, called this 



HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFERENT. 115 

to my attention, thinking- I was not aware of it. I do not re- 
member ever falling into it again. This is the contagion of 
character. In the student work of the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association many a young secretary has unconsciously 
adopted the mannerism of John R. Mott, the head of that 
work. It is the contagion of a strong character. 

If you can put your indifferent person into the presence 
of a living friend of Christ for a little while each day, he 
cannot long remain indifferent. This is not easy work; it 
will miean sacrifice and the giving up of other things, but it 
is worth the price. 



Il6 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST,- 



STUDY VII. HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFER- 
ENT AND SELF-SATISFIED. 

"And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not 
man for the sabbath." (Mark ii. 27.) 

"Are not five sparrows sold for two pence? and not one of them 
is forgotten in the sight of God. But the very hairs of your head 
are all numbered. Fear not : ye are of more value than many spar- 
rows." (Luke xii. 6, 7.) 

PART 3. HELP THE INDIFFERENT MAN TO REALIZE 
THE VALUE OF HIS OWN PERSONALITY. 

Jesus exalted personality above all institutions. Even the 
Sabbath itself must not be set over in opposition to the ul- 
timate good of a man. Man Is the final element in creation, 
and all else must bend to the making of an environment in 
which he shall find full development. Jesus represents God 
as intensely interested in every human personality. Although 
his power upholds the universe, and all creation is dependent 
upon the working of that efficient will, still God is not in- 
different to the least individual. Men have denied the effi- 
cacy of prayer on the basis of man's insignificance, but this 
is a false assumption. Significance, according to Christ, is 
not measured in physical terms. If it were, an elephant 
would be much more significant than a man. Real value is 
measured in terms of likeness to God, and by this standard 
man stands absolutely supreme. 

One of the things to do for an indifferent man is to get 
him to face the fact of his real value. If once he comes to 
understand the real meaning of his life and God's interest 
in it, the sense of gratitude ought to lead him to religious 
life. It is easy to show a man the heinousness of sin which 
destroys a personality made in the very image of God and 



HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFERENT. 117 

capable of companionship with the Creator and Sustainer 
of the universe. 

The most convincing proof of God's interest in men is the 
Hfe and death of Jesus Christ. Christ came into the world 
to show us what kind of a God we have ; how that God hates 
sin and loves men. Christ might easily have escaped death 
if he had not been so deeply interested in men. But his 
deep desire to call man back to his real place in the universe, 
his longing to help man see the degrading results of sin and 
the uplifting power of Godlike love led him so to oppose the 
dead tradition and the sins of the times that embittered men 
rose up and crucified him. 

The essential meaning of the life and death of Christ is 
the showing forth of the fact that God loves men and hates 
sin. Sin is hateful because it destroys the sacred personality 
of a man. The one way of getting men to turn away from 
this destroyer is to show how it affects the heart of God. 

Put before your indifferent man the fact that Christ be- 
lieved his life worth saving. Put before him the fact that 
the one way of saving that personality is for him to be a 
friend of Jesus Christ. "He that hath the Son hath the life, 
but he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life." 



Ilg INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VII. HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFER- 
ENT AND SELF-SATISFIED. 

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things 
are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are 
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on 
these things." (Phil. iv. 8.) 

"The art of life consists in paying attention to the right things and 
neglecting the rest." (Jevons.) 



PART 4. CHARACTER DETERMINED BY THE TPHNGS TO 
WHICH WE GIVE ATTENTION. 

Two great forces enter into the making of a life : heredity 
and environment. The battle between the respective advo- 
cates of these forces has been waged long and bitterly. Evi- 
dently heredity Is a great power in the life of a man, for he 
must have something to start with. But it cannot be final, 
else man is no longer man but a piece of clay molded by 
those forces which precede his birth, over which forces he 
has absolutely no control. 

Neither is man completely without power to discriminate 
between forces which surround him. Doubtless all persons 
and all forces which surround us do have an influence on us, 
but the real environment of a man's life is that on which he 
centers his attention. Three students go to college together, 
and room together while in college. One becomes an ath- 
lete, another a social fop, and the third a real student. The 
same forces surround them, but they center their attention 
on different portions of that environment. Only that to 
which one gives deliberate attention vitally affects character. 

Make it perfectly clear to the indifferent person that one 
whole realm of his life is absolutely dying because he is giv- 



HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFERENT. 119 

in^ no attention to the forces of spiritual life. Make it clear 
that this is by far the most important side of his life, for it 
is that which connects him with persons, God and men. 
Further, make it clear to him that persons are the only per- 
manent and valuable realities in the universe. If he is so 
busy with things that he cannot cultivate fellowship with 
persons, sooner or later he will wake up to find himself com- 
pletely isolated, and all the things which he has gathered 
will bring him no satisfaction. Even knowledge, the accu- 
mulation of facts, is useless unless one has contact with per- 
sons. An abstract fact is as useless to a man dissociated 
from persons as is an electric bulb without an electric cur- 
rent. Life is just the sum of man's contact w^ith various 
personalities. 

The indifferent man is deliberately neglecting to bring into 
his field of attention the supreme forces (persons) which 
make character. He who does not cultivate his relationship 
with God and Jesus Christ cannot possibly build the largest 
character. 

At the University of Missouri a student came to me and 
said he believed he had committed the unpardonable sin. 
When questioned as to what it was he was hopelessly con- 
fused. When it was pointed out that the complete neglect 
of one's religious nature until that nature had atrophied was 
possibly the unpardonable sin, and that life is just the sum of 
our contact with persons, he immediately said: ''That kind 
of Christianity is worth while." His complete indifference 
to creeds and formulas was at once set aside when he came 
to see the importance of associating with persons. 



I20 INTRODUCING MEN. TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VII. HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFER- 
ENT AND SELF-SATISFIED. 

"And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God 
gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are 
not fitting." (Rom. i. 28.) 

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge : because thou hast 
rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no 
priest to me : seeing thou has forgotten the law of thy God, I also will 
forget thy children." (Hos. iv. 6.) 



PART 5. ASK INDIFFERENT MEN TO FACE THE FACTS. 

The indifference of undervaluation is always due to the 
lack of knowledge. But lack of knowledge on a fundamental 
question is a crime. Hosea again and again calls the at- 
tention of the people of Israel to the fact that their great- 
est sin is the lack of knowledge of God. It lies back of all 
their sin. A man's mind is given to him that he may come to 
know the fundamental things. The excuse, so flippantly 
given, that we do not know is perhaps the most ignoble con- 
fession of all. Ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the 
law. Neither is ignorance an excuse before God. No man 
has a right to be ignorant of the facts which are the very 
foundation of character. 

What are the facts? First, that every man has in him a 
sense of need for God. Does a universal fact such as this 
have any meaning? If so, has any man the right to pass that 
meaning by without knowing what it is ? The second fact 
is like unto the first ; every man has a sense of sin. He feels 
himself undone. Is there any reality to this feeling? Does 
it point anywhere? Why should it be put in the human 
heart if there is no fundamental reason for it ? What right 



HOIV TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFERENT. 121 

has a man to fail to fathom the meaning of this stubborn fact ? 
The kind of person Jesus Christ was, the kind of message 
he brought, the kind of work he did — this is a group of facts 
which challenges the attention of every sane man. Every 
thinking man must do something with these facts. No man 
who claimls to be intellectually honest can afford to pass over 
facts like these — in their influence on history the most mo- 
mentous facts the world has ever known. 

Honesty of mind demands two things : First, that a man 
shall face the facts of life as they are. The man who is too 
lazy or too indifferent to face the most fundamental facts of 
life is simply intellectually dishonest. No other word will 
express it. Secondly, when a man sees a truth he must act 
on it, if he means to keep his intellectual self-respect. To 
know truth and not to act on it to the best of one's ability, 
this is sin. It is moral suicide. It is intellectual dishonesty. 

Bring your indifferent man squarely before these facts. 
Help him to see that indifference is a sin against his intel- 
lectual self-respect. Help himi to see that dishonesty here 
is more awful in its consequences than dishonesty in connec- 
tion with the realm of things. 



122 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VII. HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFER- 
ENT AND SELF-SATISFIED. 

"Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when he cometh shall 
find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and 
make them sit down to meat, and shall come and serve them. And 
if he shall come in the second watch, and if in the third, and find 
them so, blessed are those servants. But know this, that if the master 
of the house had known in what hour the thief was coming, he would 
have watched, and not have left his house to be broken through. 
Be ye also ready : for in an hour that ye think not the Son of man 
cometh." (Luke xii. 37-40.) 

PART 6. MEET THE EXCUSES "NO TIME" AND "DON'T 

FEEL LIKE IT." 

The man who is indifferent because of preoccupation feels 
that he has not the time to be a Christian. There are three 
things which, it seems to me, we ought to say to this man. 
First, he finds time for all things that he really considers 
worth while. If he is genuinely in earnest about this time 
question, then he undervalues Christianity. If it is worth 
anything, it is well worth the time necessary. Make the he- 
roic call for service. 

Secondly, I would say to him that it does not take any 
more time to be in a friendly attitude toward God and men 
than it does to be in an unfriendly attitude toward these per- 
sons. Christianity is not a matter of time but a matter of 
spirit. 

Thirdly, I would say to him (and I would be willing to 
stake the whole argument on this) that he gains time by 
being a Christian. Every person who has any serious work 
must come to that work in the spirit of calm and composure. 
He who does not have himself well in hand, who does not 
hold the reins of his life well in his grip cannot hope to ac- 



HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFERENT. 123 

complish great things. The busier a man is the more impor- 
tant that he should have a perfect calm and self-control. 
Whatever will help a man to get this calm and self-control 
will surely add to his capacity for achievement. Such power 
we claim for religious life. The proof of this is not far to 
seek. The men who have carried the weight of the world's 
burdens in all generations have on the whole been religious 
men. It has been demonstrated by more than one study that 
the Christian men in our colleges as a class outstrip the non- 
Christian men. They ought so to do. They have a sense of 
calm, of peace, of self-control which makes every hour count 
for more than it could otherwise do. 

Another man objects that he does not feel like being a 
Christian. But one cannot afford to live on feelings alone. 
One's judgment must be given some consideration. Besides, 
all the training, all the education we have had has been an 
attempt to enable us to feel as we ought to act, and not to act 
as we feel. Duty and not feeling is the supreme word. 

Some men think that right action when one does not feel 
right is hypocrisy. But it is far better for a man to feel 
wrong and act right than both to feel and act wrong. Be- 
sides, if a man's judgment tells himi the right thing and he 
acts on it, his feelings will soon swing into line. 



124 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VII. HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFER- 
ENT AND SELF-SATISFIED. 

"Happy is the man that feareth alway; but he that hardeneth his 
heart shall fall into mischief." (Prov. xxviii. 14.) 

"Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do al- 
ways resist the Holy Spirit: as your fathers did, so do ye." (Acts 
vii. 51.) 

"Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he 
fall." (I Cor. X. 12.) 

"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for 
they shall be filled." (Matt. v. 6.) 



PART 7. THE SIN OF THE SELF-SATISFIED. 

The man who is satisfied with himself and refuses to re- 
ceive anything" from the outside is, in the nature of the case, 
cut off from all g-rowth. The very first condition of receiv- 
ingf any truth is to be dissatisfied with your present attain- 
ment. It is the hungering and thirsting that make it pos- 
sible for one to be filled. He that neither hungers nor thirsts 
must always remain empty. 

To such a person one can say that the most serious result 
of sin is the consequent readjustment of a man's attitude 
toward it. At first it seemed wrong ; but now it seems per- 
fectly legimitate. Self-satisfaction does not mean perfection, 
but rather that conscience has been stifled. If you find a per- 
son of this type, you must make him see that the best part of 
his life has been killed. A college man at a religious gather- 
ing once protested to me that the vilest forms of sin were le- 
gitimate and proper. His conscience seemed to be absolutely 
asleep. Another student excused cheating on the basis that 



HOW TO AWAKEN THE INDIFFERENT. 12^ 

all students did it, and it was necessary in order to pass. 
Sin deceives us in that it makes us defend the practices of our 
lives, which practices at first we knew were wrong. 

The self-satisfied man gets behind the plea that he is doing 
his best and that is all that is necessary. But no man is doing 
his best who does not take advantage of every means which 
is provided. Think of the silliness of a boy and girl who 
would say they were doing their best to get an education, and 
yet refuse to attend a college in their own town when the 
means were provided. The man w^ho says he is doing his 
best and yet refuses to take God into account deliberately fal- 
sifies. He is not doing his best until he has called all possi- 
ble resources to his aid. 

Lastly, to the self-satisfied man you can say that the great- 
est sin against love is neglect, and that sin he is committing 
because he refuses to speak to his Heavenly Father. He is 
guilty of the greatest of sins, ingratitude. ''To watch," says 
George Adam Smith, "though unable to soothe a dear body 
racked with pain is peace beside the awful vigil of watching 
a soul shrink and blacken with vice and your love unable to 
redeem it." 

He who will deliberately wound the heart of love is guilty 
of the darkest sin. This is what the self-satisfied man does 
daily. By refusing to love his Father, by refusing to turn 
to him in friendly spirit, he is deliberately wounding that 
Fatherly God. If he has no other sin than this, he needs for- 
giveness. 

"Hell," says George Adam Smith, "has been painted as a 
place of fires. But when we contemplate that men come to it 
with the holiest flames in the nature quenched, we shall just- 
ly feel it is rather a dreary waste of ash and cinder, . . . 
silent in death, for there is no life there ; and there is no life 
there because there is no love, and no love because men in 
rejecting or abusing her have slain their own power ever 
again to feel her presence." 



STUDY VIII. 

How TO Help the Man Whose Faith Is Unsettled. 

(127) 



128 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VIII. HOW TO HELP THE MAN WHOSE 
FAITH IS UNSETTLED. 

"Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the 
Almighty unto perfection?" (Job xi. 7.) 

"For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been 
his counselor?" (Rom. xi. 34.) 



PART I. PRESENT-DAY FORM OF UNREST. 

This is distinctly not an age of scofifing. Men once 
laughed at religion and thought it the most foolish dream. 
The French Revolution banished Christianity and put the 
worship of reason in its place. One skeptic said he could 
go through the Bible and fell the trees and they would 
never grow again. It was with pride that one truly great 
spirit signed himself "Percy Bysshe Shelley, Atheist." No 
man of thoughtfulness would do that now. The age of 
blatant infidelity is gone. 

Neither is this an age of atheism. Most men acknowl- 
edge that there is a God, though they may stop far short of 
the Christian conception of a God who as a Father loves his 
children. 

The present form of doubt is not so far removed from 
that of Job. It is a reverent uncertainty. Men are not 
sure as they once were. The whole basis of knowledge has 
been changed. Science has brought us to feel that we must 
proceed carefully from the known to the unknown. Criti- 
cism has made us careful in the examination of the records 
of the past. Philosophy has made us less dogmatic about 
some supposedly religious facts. Some men are therefore 
deeply troubled. 

The point of this day's thought is simply this : Unsettled 



HOW TO HELP MEN OF UNSETTLED FAITH. 129 

faith is nothing new. It has always existed. But present- 
day uncertainty is not irreverent or atheistic. The person 
who claims to be an atheist is perhaps unlearned. Most of 
the men in doubt are honestly seeking- light. They believe 
there is a power in the universe which works for righteous- 
ness, but they are not certain of its attributes. 

The first step in meeting and helping the person whose 
faith is unsettled is to recognize the form which his question- 
ing assumes. The studies which follow will attempt to make 
clear some of the fundamental questions of Christian life. 
They are put plainly and simply, in order that they may 
help even the unscholarly and immature. A sympathetic 
understanding of these forms of uncertainty may help us 
to reach a solution of some of them. Tennyson strikes the 
keynote to the present type of doubt in those pathetic lines 
of "In Memoriam:" 

The wish that of the living whole 

No life may fail beyond the grave, 

Derives it not from what we have 
The likest God within the soul ? 

I falter where I firmly trod, 
And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 

That slope through darkness up to God, 

I stretch lame hands of faith and grope 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all. 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 



I30 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY VIIL HOW TO HELP THE MAN WHOSE 
FAITH IS UNSETTLED. 

"And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and wherefore do 
questionings arise in your heart? See my hands and my feet, that it 
is I myself : handle me, and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, 
as ye behold me having. And when he had said this, he showed 
them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy, 
and wondered, he said unto them. Have ye here anything to eat? And 
they gave him a piece of a broiled fish. And he took it and ate be- 
fore them. And he said unto them. These are my words which I 
spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must needs 
be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, 
and the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their mind, that 
they might understand the scriptures." (Luke xxiv. 38-45.) 



PART 2. OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD THE MAN OF UNSET- 
TLED FAITH. 

There Is nothing in the life of Christ which is more beau- 
tiful than the attitude he assumed toward his doubting- and 
troubled followers. A man with an unsettled faith is like 
smoking- flax, which smolders but cannot burst into flame. 
Christ never rudely smothered out the spark that was there. 
Instead, his kindly spirit fanned it into flame. 

How difiFerent from this is the attitude assumed by many 
of Christ's followers of to-day. I have on my table, as I 
write, a book on personal work in which the chapter on 
doubt is headed with the quotation : "The fool hath said 
in his heart. There is no God- They are corrupt," etc. The 
author goes on to say that most of the doubt is due to corrupt 
living. This is absolutely false. Some men do claim to be 
in doubt because they wish to excuse their sin, but that is 
not the prevailing temper of our time. Most doubters to-day 
are really troubled and are honest. If we are to reach them 
and help them, we must recognize their honesty. 

Neither is it a sign of weakness that a man should be un- 



J 
HOW TO HELP MEN OF UNSETTLED FAITH. 131 

settled. The doubter Is often referred to as an intellectual 
trifler or as an intellectual imbecile. Such there may be — 
God pity them! — but it is certain that the majority of the 
men who are unsettled belong to neither class. 

Our attitude must be one of trust. We must give them 
credit for being honest and sincere, as most of them are. We 
must treat them as intellectual equals, as indeed they are; 
and not infrequently they are superiors. A senior at the 
University of North Carolina asked me to have a talk with 
a freshman who was in doubt. I asked the senior if he had 
ever talked with his friend, and he said: ''Yes; but he has 
read so much more widely than I that I cannot help him." 
I have found unsettled students in agricultural schools who 
have read and studied more on the fundamental questions 
than have Christian postgraduates in the average university. 
Intellectually they are as a class really worthy. 

Neither are we to treat these men as enemies of truth. 
They may be the greatest friends of truth. Luther was in 
his day a great heretic ; Wesley was considered a dangerous 
man; and indeed Jesus Christ himself was branded by his 
time as the arch enemy of truth. 

Read to-day all the passages you can find where Christ 
deals with a man in doubt. See if Christ was not sympa- 
thetic. Shall we not follow in his footsteps ? 

You say, but with no touch of scorn, 

■ Sweet-hearted you, whose light-blue eyes 

Are tender over drowning flies — 
You tell me doubt is devil-born. 

I know not : one indeed I knew 

In many a subtle question versed. 

Who touched a jarring lyre at first. 
But ever strove to make it true. 

Perplexed in faith but pure in deed, 

At last he beat his music out. 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

He fought his doubts and gathered strength, 
He would not make his judgment blind; 
He faced the specters of the mind 

And laid them. — Tennyson's "In Memoriam." 



132 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VIII. HOW TO HELP THE MAN WHOSE 
FAITH IS UNSETTLED. 

"And one of the multitude answered him, Teacher, I brought unto 
thee my son, who hath a dumb spirit. . . . And he asked his fa- 
ther, How long time is it since this hath come unto him? And he 
said. From a child. And ofttimes it hath cast him both into the fire 
and into the waters, to destroy him : but if thou canst do anything, 
have compassion on us, and help us. And Jesus said unto him, If 
thou canst ! All things are possible to him that believeth. Straight- 
way, the father of the child cried out, and said, I believe; help thou 
mine unbelief." (Mark ix. 17, 21-24.) 



PART 3. HOW MUCH MUST ONE BELIEVE BEFORE HE 
CAN BEGIN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE? 

Incorrect belief or no belief at all is not a matter of un- 
concern. It does make a difference what we believe or fail 
to believe. Right belief has a contribution to make to the 
life, and without that right belief the largest character can 
never be ours. The danger of pressing this too far lies in 
the fact that we may drive many people into negative life. 
If a man cannot accept all the creeds, then he feels himself 
excused from taking up the obligations of the Christian life. 
The attempt to msake mien settle all doctrinal questions be- 
fore they become Christians has kept many a person out of 
the kingdom. 

What is the very minimum amount of belief that one may 
have and still start to be a Christian ? Does one have to be- 
lieve there is a personal God ? Does one have to believe that 
Christ is the Son of God ? Must one believe that the Bible 
is inspired? Can he begin without having settled these 
three fundamental questions? Christ said he could. "If 
any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teach- 
ings." The minimum! of conviction is that the Christ ideal 
is worthy, that it offers a standard higher than what we have 



HOW TO HELP MEN OF UNSETTLED FAITH. 133 

elsewhere, and that we must give ourselves to the kind of 
life that Christ offers. This is very little, and yet it is won- 
derfully large and comprehensive. Christ was willing to 
trust it, for he knew that the man who gave himself up to 
the ideal would some time come to accept the living reality. 

As if to press this point home, Christ again and again ap- 
pealed to men to accept his works as having the God quality 
in them: "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me 
not. But if I do them, though ye believe not in me, believe 
the works." (John x. 37.) And again he says: "The very^ 
works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath 
sent me." (John iii. 36.) 

To the man therefore who does not and cannot now ac- 
cept the fact of a personal God as verified truth ; cannot ac- 
cept the fact of Christ as a reality to which his mind can give 
assent; cannot even accept the record in the Bible as au- 
thoritative, but does believe the ideal of Christ as we now 
have it, regardless of where it com'es from — to such a man 
the beginning is possible. He is very far from being a ma- 
ture Christian, but he can begin. 

The one essential thing for a beginning is that high moral- 
ity makes an appeal to him. If there is that in the man 
which responds to the fundamental reality of character 
which Jesus displays, and if he will deliberately put himself 
into the right relation with that ideal, then he has already be- 
gun to be a follower of Christ. Of course he must not stop 
with this. If he is satisfied with this little, that is proof posi- 
tive that he has not the honest attitude. But if he begins 
here and tries to make this ideal the pattern of his life, with 
mind ever open and alert to new truth, he has entered the 
path which leads to life eternal. 

Robert Browning, for whom the reality of Christ had many 
difficulties, threw himself into the Christ ideal, and finally he 
was able to write these splendid lines : 

That one face, far from vanish, rather grows 

Or decomposes but to recompose, 
Becomes my universe that feels and knows. 

"That face," said he to Mrs. Orr, "is the face of Christ. 
That is how I know and feel him." 



134 



INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VIII. HOW TO HELP THE MAN WHOSE 
FAITH IS UNSETTLED. 

"If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, 
whether it is of God, or whether I speak from myself." (John vii. 
17.) 

"But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not 
cast out demons, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons. . . . 
Therefore I say unto you, Every sin and blasphemy shall be for- 
given unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be 
forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of 
man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against 
the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, 
nor in that which is to come." (Matt. xii. 24, 31, 32.) 



PART 4. THE ATTITUDE OF THE TRUTH SEEKER. 

In the last section we indicated the minimum belief which 
a man may have and yet start toward Christ. But to stop 
with that little would be spiritual suicide. If one finds an 
ideal really worthy, it is incumbent on one to go behind the 
ideal to its originator. To ascribe this ideal to chance is the 
worst blasphemy. Every fair-minded man must be open to 
conviction. 

Jesus Christ healed a blind, dumb lunatic. It was a strik- 
ing and marvelous work. The Pharisees had to find some 
explanation for it. Human nature must find an explanation 
for facts. We cannot rest satisfied otherwise. So the Phar- 
isees said: "This is not the power of God, but the power of 
Satan." Christ turned and sharply rebuked them: "Every 
sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men ; but the blas- 
phemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven." "They had 
witnessed that glorious miracle," says David Smith, "and 
they had known it was a work of God ; yet they had hardened 
their hearts and pronounced it a work of the devil." This 
was a sin which could not be pardoned, for it was a sin 
against the very Spirit of Truth. 

The man who deliberately closes his eyes to truth, by that 



HOW TO HELP MEN OF UNSETTLED FAITH. 135 

very act destroys his capacity to find truth. Fidelity to a 
man's truth-seeking instinct, loyalty to one's own best in- 
ner light is the absolute essential of life. The minute one 
ceases to search for truth or refuses to obey truth when 
found he is beginning to commit that sin which destroys all 
future possibilities. 

Your man, therefore, who begins with the acceptance of an 
ideal must be honest enough to search for the explanation 
of that ideal. The worship of an ideal is not religion, and 
will not bring life. In no realm of life save religion will a 
man sit down satisfied with a half truth, and one does it in 
religion at the peril of his life. 

Two things the man who starts to find truth must do. 
First, he must act on all the light he now has. Every frag- 
ment of truth which he possesses he must practice and prop- 
agate. He dare not wait until all mystei-y is solved. He 
must act on what he now has. "He that hath to him shall be 
given." Action on the little we have opens the way for new 
truth. "Any flash of insight into the good," says Professor 
Coe, "however dim. and incomplete, at once lays obligation 
upon us." 

In the second place, each man must be a searcher for 
truth. The man who says he does not believe water will 
quench thirst and dies of thirst with water at his hand is a 
pure trifler. He who says that the Christ ideal is beaiitifid, 
and yet makes no attempt to investigate thoroughly the facts 
behind that ideal, is a thousand times more a trifler. It is 
not a sin to be in doubt, but it is sin of the deepest dye to sit 
down satisfied with doubt. Doubt is stagnation and death 
if one becomes satisfied with it. The doubter who claims 
to be honest and yet makes no attempt to dissolve his doubt 
thereby proves himself the veriest knave. He may not ulti- 
mately come to see truth as you or I see it, but he must get 
out of his negative mood. He must come to some positive 
conviction. Anything less than this is trifling. 

"We have but faith : we cannot know ; 
For knowledge is of things we see ; 
And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness : let it grow." 



136 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VIII. HOW TO HELP THE MAN WHOSE 
FAITH IS UNSETTLED. 

"And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and said, Ye 
men of Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are very religious. 
For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I 
found also an altar with this inscription, To an Unknown God. What, 
therefore, ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you." (Acts 
xvii. 22, 23.) 



PART 5. BE CONSTRUCTIVE IN DEALING WITH UN- 
SETTLED FAITH. 

Argumentation is the poorest method known for con- 
vincing either yourself or another man. In the midst of an 
argument the passions are aroused and the judgment is 
thrown into the background. It is always wise when you 
wish to get another to see the truth, whether it be scientific, 
political, or religious truth, to allow the other man to state 
uninterruptedly his conceptions; then state your own in 
like manner. In dealing with the truth seeker I have usually 
said : "I myself have had questions, and this is the way I 
found relief; perhaps this may help you to find the truth 
which you are seeking." This at once disarms any antago- 
nism. In one of the colleges some years ago I met a relative 
of Robert Ingersoll, a fine, intellectual fellow. He came for 
an interview, primed for a great argument. I would not 
argue. I simply said I took for granted that he was genu- 
inely in earnest to find the truth about Christ. I outlined 
carefully the steps I had taken in solving my own doubt on 
that question, and then asked him if he would not begin a 
thorough investigation. He agreed he wouldv A year 
later I visited his college again and he came for another in- 
terview. When asked what progress he had made he re- 



HOM^ TO HELP MEN OF UNSETTLED FAITH. 137 

plied : *1 have deliberately come to the conclusion that Christ 
is the Son of God." Arg-ument would have driven him 
farther away. Constructive dealing helped. 

In this connection one ought to caution the inexperienced 
worker not to allow himself to be kept on the defensive. 
Do not let the other man keep you answering his doubts. 
You cannot answer them all. Some things can be answered 
only by life processes, not in words. Many a man needs 
to hang up most of his doubts and live positively on what 
he does believe. 

Therefore do as Paul did. Find out what a man does be- 
lieve. It may be that the only thing he believes is the reality 
of his own sense of duty. Then begin with that. Ask him 
to think of the meaning of this sense of duty, which is uni- 
versal. Ask him to consider why man alone understands 
the "ought" conception. From this lead him step by step 
into constructive thinking. 

I once organized a large Bible class of Jewish students. 
When I proposed that they study the life of Christ one man 
objected strenuously. I did not ask him his objection, but 
asked what was the orthodox Jewish conception of Jesus. 
He said they believe him to be a great teacher and a great 
prophet. I asked him if they consider him as great a 
teacher and prophet as Isaiah. "Yes, much greater, the 
greatest of all." "Well, then, you ought to know what 
the great man taught and did." Not another objection was 
raised, and the class studied the life of Christ. But the class 
could have been wrecked if I had taken the defensive and 
tried to answer his objections. 

Find out what your man does accept. Ask him to forget 
his doubts for a season, just for the sake of investigation; 
point out a constructive course of thought; make sure that 
he actually does think ; and, above all, insist on his living up 
to the standard of what he does believe, and most doubters 
will soon find the light breaking. 



138 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VIII. HOW TO HELP THE MAN WHOSE 
FAITH IS UNSETTLED. 

"For when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things 
of the law, these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves; 
in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their 
conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with 
another accusing or else excusing them." (Rom. ii. 14, 15.) 



PART 6. IS RELIGION A REALITY? 

I RECENTLY Spent ati hour with a brilliant young professor 
talking" about the fundamental facts of religion. Finally he 
said: "I have deliberately come to the conclusion that there 
is no reality in religion. It is just the exaggerated wish of 
our hearts, to which we have ascribed reality." This is not 
an isolated case. I had a conversation two years ago with 
another m'an who took precisely the same attitude. This 
latter man I know well personally, and consider him one of 
the cleanest, truest men I know. He is absolutely honest in 
his belief, or non-belief, as we may call it. 

This is no new philosophy. A school of English thinkers 
held to this theory less than a century ago. To them the one 
final reality was thought. Everything outside of us is a de- 
lusion of the senses. There is no God: and evil is simply 
that which causes us pain ; while good is that which gives us 
pleasure. Living in the midst of pain as man does, he nat- 
urally desires to find peace and soothing. He thinks he can 
find this in fellowship with a comfplete being. So man's de- 
sire becomes the father of his God. This meeting of need 
and creed Browning sets forth in "Easter Day :" 

The human hearts' best; you prefer 
Making that prove the minister 



HOW TO HELP MEN OF UNSETTLED FAITH. 139 

To truth ; you probe its wants and needs. 
And hopes and fears, then try what creeds 
Meet these most aptly — resolute 
That faith plucks such substantial fruit 
Wherever these two correspond. 

And again in "A Death in the Desert," speaking of the 
Christ conception, Browning represents the doubter saying: 

Did not we ourselves make him? 
Our mind receives but what it holds, no more. 
First of the love, then; we acknowledge Christ — 
A proof we comprehend his love, a proof 
We had such love already in ourselves, 
Knew first what else we should not recognize. 
'Tis mere projection from man's inmost mind. 

This v^hole question of whether there is anything outside 
us corresponding to our need for God, whether these states 
which we call religious experience are real or simply the 
pictures of an inflamied imagination, needs to have careful 
attention. To-day let us glance back at the headings of 
Study II. and ask ourselves if a mere imagination can give 
us peace of conscience, can transform us from self-centered 
to God-centered personalities, can give us a unified being 
and send us out with a new loyalty which is helping us to 
conquer the world. Can a mere "projection from a man's 
mind" do this? 



140 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY VIII. HOW TO HELP THE MAN WHOSE 
FAITH IS UNSETTLED. 

As the hart panteth after the water brooks. 

So panteth my soul after thee, O God. 

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God : 

When shall I come and appear before God ? 

My tears have been my food day and night, 

While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? 

These things I remember, and pour out my soul within me, 

How I went with the throng, and led them to the house of God, 

With the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping holyday. 

Why art thou cast down, O my soul ? 

And v/hy art thou disquieted within me? 

Hope thou in God ; for I shall yet praise him 

For the help of his countenance." (Ps. Ixii. 1-5.) 



PART 7. IS RELIGION A REALITY? 
(Concluded.) 

Look back to Study V., Part i, to see what was given 
there as a test of reality. Ordinarily men accept an expe- 
rience as real when a great number of independent, compe- 
tent witnesses testify to its truth. That the vast majority of 
the men in the world have testified to their sense of the real- 
ity of religion cannot be doubted. 

A second test of reality is whether it really makes any 
difference if the thing in question is neglected. If a thing 
has reality, then to neglect it must make some difference. 
Does it make any difference when religion is neglected, and 
does it make any difference when religion is cultivated ? We 
have tried to answer the second question in relation to a spe- 
cific religion in Study II. We saw there that something 
does really happen when a man becomes a Christian. 

But is a man poorer when he leaves rehgion out of his 
life? Development into the fullest personality is the con- 
scious need of all humanity. The ideal for that development 
may vary greatly, but all men want and expect development. 
It is just as universally recognized that man has lost his 
way. Something is wrong. He has not the power within 



HOW TO HELP MEN OF UNSETTLED FAITH. 141 

him to attain his full development. It is a fact of universal 
consciousness that fullest development can comfe only through 
the proper adjustment of the forces within with the forces 
without. Now religion is just this readjustment; it is just 
this proper relationship of the self within with the life with- 
out. And precisely this is the most real need and the deepest 
consciousness of humanity. Millions of men testify that by 
this proper relationship they have found new power for de- 
velopment. To them: religion is real. 

The only way, therefore, to set aside the reality of religion 
is to deny the power of our own inner life to give us the 
truth. If there is no reality corresponding to this need, and 
likewise to this consciousness of experience, then there is no 
such thing as finding truth. If there is nothing to correspond 
to the fundamental human need, then this is a cheat world. 
There is no honesty here. It is precisely as if I had eyes but 
there were no light; or as if I had hunger and there were 
no food. If we cannot trust our nature, when tested by the 
experience of universal nature to give us the truth, the truth 
cannot be found. This ends in nothingness. There not only 
cannot be any religious truth ; there can be no truth of any 
kind. This makes us of all creation the most miserable part. 
We have within us a yearning for truth, but we have no way 
of finding it, or verifying it when found. No sane man can 
rest in such a conclusion. And yet to avoid that we must 
trust our natures to give us the truth. If we do that, these 
natures tell us religion is real. We must therefore accept 
religion as a reality, or else deny the possibility of finding 
truth. I see no way out of this conclusion. 

And when man questioned, "What if there be love," 



He reasons, "Since such love is everywhere, 
And since ourselves can love and would be loved, 
We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not," 
How shall ye help this man who knows himself. 
That he must love and would be loved again. 
Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ, 
Rejecteth Christ through very need of him? 

I say, the acknowledgment of God In Christ 
Accepted by thy reason solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 

— Brozvning's "A Death in the Desert^ 



STUDY IX. 
Fundamentals of the Christian Faith. 

(143) 



144 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 

FAITH. 

"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place 
In all generations. 

Before the mountains were brought forth, 
Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world. 
Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." 

(Ps. XC. I, 2.) 



PART I. IS BELIEF IN AN INTELLIGENT FIRST CAUSE 
[GOD] CONSISTENT WITH SCIENTIFIC TRUTH? 

If we were successful in our last study in making clear that 
religion is a genuine reality, the next question we w411 wish 
to ask is. What is the heart and center of this religion ? What 
is this environment outside us with which we need to relate 
ourselves ? Is it force or is it person. In the University of 
North Carolina last year I had a number of the brightest 
men in college asking just this question. What is this force 
in the universe which seems to make for righteousness ? One 
of these men was specializing on science, and thought science 
made it impossible for him to believe in God, so I began with 
him on his positive beliefs. I said to him:: "Science proceeds 
on the assumption that there is a uniformity in the action of 
nature. If I drop a stone here it will fall to the ground. If 
I drop it in China next year it will fall likewise. The laws 
of nature hold good at all times and at all places. Nature 
acts in accordance with the principle of uniformity." This 
he readily accepted. Then I said uniformity is just another 
way of saying unity. In other words, science proceeds on 
the assumption that behind all the forces of nature there is 
one supreme force which knits all together into one com- 
plete and perfect whole. This he again readily admitted. 



FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 



145 



This was one good step; for while we had not arrived at 
God, we had agreed there was a unity at the heart of the 
universe. 

Science proceeds, in the second place, I said, on the basis 
of an intelligible world, — that is, science takes for granted 
that the truth of the world can be understood. The world is 
made in such a fashion that my mind can take hold of it. If 
this were not true, there could be no science. If my mind 
and the nature of the universe were of absolutely different 
kind, then there would be no common ground and I should 
not be able to know anything about the world. But the fact 
that the world is so constituted that it is intelligible is not the 
result of mere accident. There is a uniform process, and 
that uniformity is intelligible, hence nature must be the 
handiwork of an intelligent cause. If there were no intel- 
ligence in nature corresponding to my intelligence, then this 
process of nature would be completely incomprehensible to 
me. But since these processes are intelligible, I must con- 
clude that the unifying force behind the forces of the uni- 
verse is intelligent. 

This student went away feeling that it was not only pos- 
sible to believe in an intelligent first cause, but more, it was 
necessary if he was to have any genuine basis for his science. 
Science must proceed on the basis of a God that has at least 
intelligence and power. 

10 



146 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 

FAITH. 

"And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is 
good save one, even God." (Mark x. 18.) 



PART 2. CAN WE BELIEVE IN A GOOD GOD? 

One of the hardest problems that faced the men of the 
Old Testament was the reconciling- of sin, suffering, and 
triumphant evil with a good God. This is the very heart of 
the problem in the book of Job. And yet, as I indicated in 
Study IV., the Christian religion definitely sets forth such 
a God. Is there any justification for such a conception, and 
what shall we say to the man who doubts it ? 

There came to m|e once for an interview a college man who 
had been born into a house of infamy, who bore on his body 
the mlarks of his mother's sins, whose life had been one long, 
hard struggle against this evil inheritance, and whose strug- 
gle to get an education was scarcely short of a tragedy. He 
told me his story and asked if I could help him to see that 
there was a moral principle at the heart of the universe. 

First, one had to go over the ground of the last study, 
leading up to the thought of an intelligent first cause. Then 
I attempted to show him that the religious nature of human- 
ity demands a chance to worship. His coming to me was an 
expression of that same inner need. As we have seen in a 
former study, there must be reality in this religious sense, 
else we cannot trust our natures to give us truth at all. This 
I tried to get him to see. Then I said : "Unless God is good, 
there can be no real religion ; for religion is a sense of fel- 
lowship with a higher kindred power, with whom we desire 
to live on terms of friendship. But unless God is good, there 
is no higher power. Goodness is the final term, and men 
having a spark of goodness would be far more Godlike than 
a God without goodness, or, as Browning puts it : 

The loving worm within its clod 
Were diviner than a loveless God 
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say. 



FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 147 

There cannot be any such thing as religion if there is not 
a good God. We are led back at once to our old trouble : un- 
less there is a good God then all our aspirations for fellow- 
ship with such a God are false tenders, paying dross instead 
of gold ; we are in a false world, a world in which we dare 
not trust our highest natures, which cannot be. 

"Again, if God is not good," I said to my student, "then 
man's petty goodness is the final goodness that now exists, 
and there is no complete or perfect goodness in existence. 
The universe, in other words, according to the estimate of 
man's best nature, has had left out of it the supreme princi- 
ple — goodness. There is a canker at the very heart of things 
which makes life useless and a failure. Since there is no 
principle of goodness at the heart of things, then my little 
effort at goodness is useless, for there is no ultimate standard 
by which to measure my life, and my striving like as not is 
in the wrong direction instead of the right. Here again we 
are forced back upon the conclusion that if God is not good, 
we are completely undone and are living in a false world 
where we are not sure we can discriminate between right and 
wrong. But we all know this is sheer nonsense. We know 
we can tell the difference. We are all practical philoso- 
phers in that we act as though there were at the heart of the 
universe a principle of goodness — that is, a good God." 
"It is more difficult to account for life on the supposition that 
there is no good God than it is to convince one's self of such 
a God. But how can I come to feel his goodness ?" 

I urged him, since he saw that it was more reasonable to 
believe in a good God than not to believe in him, to put him- 
self on the side of intellect and act as though there were such 
a being — that is, test it in the laboratory of experience. If 
God is good and loving, then he wants us to speak to him. 
So I urged my student to pray. He is interested in every 
man and wants every man to have Hfe. So I urged my stu- 
dent to begin loving and serving his fellow-men. Surely he 
has spoken to his children and has pointed out the way to a 
larger life; so I urged my student to begin Bible study. 
Finally this student with the tragic life said that he would 
try, and a day or two later he was one of the men who rose 
publicly and declared his intention of being a friend to God. 



148 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 

FAITH. 

"Bless Jehovah, O my soul, 
And forget not all his benefits : 
Like as a father pitieth his children, 
So Jehovah pitieth them that fear him." (Ps. clii. 2, 13.) 

"If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also : from 
henceforth ye know him, and have seen him." (John xiv. 7.) 



PART 3. HELPING THE MAN TROUBLED ABOUT GOD'S 

PERSONALITY. 

The writers in the Testaments have absolutely no doubt 
that God is possessed of full personality. In fact, some of 
the writers of the Old Testament set forth a God with much 
of the limitations of human personality, and this meager- 
ness of conception has caused many modern Christians to 
draw away from the idea of God as a person. Christ had a 
distinct consciousness of God as his Father. All his prayers 
to God and his statements about God are expressed in per- 
sonal language. The question which arises here is whether 
we as modem thinkers can accept as reasonable this con- 
ception of divine personality. 

At the University of Illinois there came to m'e a postgrad- 
uate student who had been in his undergraduate days an 
active worker in the Young Men's Christian A-Ssociation. 
But he had begun to question the personality of God, and, 
feeling that this was central, had fallen away from his 
former Christian activity. Here was an earnest seeker for 
the truth, who had once believed in this fact of personality, 
but whose study had led him afield. What could be said to 
him that would bring back his old conviction in a new and 
more vital form? 

First, I made clear to him that personality is not physical 
form; these two must be kept absolutely distinct. Then I 
said to him: "We cannot make for ourselves a mental picture 
of even human personality. We can only understand the 
attributes which go to make that personality. The attributes 



FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 149 

are intellect, sensibility (love, etc.), will power. Every man 
is conscious of having united in himself these three in great- 
er or less degrees of development. The conscious union of 
intelligence, affection, and will makes personality. What- 
ever being has this has personality. No others have. This 
is perfectly clear, and yet we cannot picture personality to 
ourselves. It is, however, none the less real. This my post- 
graduate finally acknowledged. 

I then went on to say that personality does not mean lim- 
itation, as is often thought and as he himself had said. On 
the contrary, personality is a conscious union of these three 
attributes ; and as these attributes become more and more 
perfect — that is, limitations are removed — the possessor 
of them becomes more and more completely personal. This 
makes it possible for Dr. W. N. Clark to define a perfect per- 
son as "the being in whom these essential powers which con- 
stitute personality (intelligence, affection, and will) exist in 
perfect quality and degree, and are perfectly bound together 
and welded in use in the unity of self-directing conscious- 
ness. This is the perfect person." 

This is, as I pointed out to my student friend, perfectly 
conceivable. 

I have a little intelligence. I trust my mind to give me 
fragments of truth. This mind is continually developing, so 
that I am much more intelligent now than I was twenty years 
ago. I can conceive of a mind, therefore, that has no limita- 
tions in the realm of truth ; a mind that knows all truth in- 
tuitively. Likewise I have a love nature which is growing. 
I can conceive of a person who loves instinctively everything 
that is worthy of love. In similar manner I have some will 
power. I can do certain things, or I can refuse to do them. 
I am a moral agent with a free will. Now I can conceive of 
a person in whom this will is unlimited, who always chooses 
the right and immediately acts upon it. Thus I can con- 
ceive of a person who has perfect intelligence, perfect love, 
perfect will, a complete and unlimited personality. This 
person I call God. 

Man's soul is moved by what, if it in turn 
Must move, is kindred soul. 

— Browning's "The Sun." 



150 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 

FAITH. 

"xA.nd he said, Thou canst not see my face; for man shall not see 
me and live. And Jehovah said, Behold, there is a place by me, and 
thou shalt stand upon the rock : and it shall come to pass, while my 
glpry passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and 
will cover thee with my hand until I have passed by : and I will take 
away my hand, and thou shalt see my back; but my face shall not 
be seen/' (Ex. xxxiii. 20-23.) 

"Behold, I go forward, and he is not there ; 
And backward, but I cannot perceive him; 
On the left hand, when he doth work, but I cannot 

behold him ; 
He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot 

see him." (Job xxiii. 8, 9.) 



PART 4. HELPING THE MAN TROUBLED ABOUT GOD'S 

PERSONALITY 

(Continued). 

In my discussion with the postgraduate at the University 
of Illinois the question arose : If God is a person, and wants 
to make himself known to men, why is it so hard for m^en 
to come to know him ? This difficulty was faced in Job and 
others of the Old Testament writings, and is likewise found 
in the New Testament. Vaguely, perhaps, even the writer 
of Exodus understood that it would be death to human per- 
sonality to be brought face to face with the overmastering 
personality of the Almighty. 

One of the greatest dangers of a strong and masterful 
personality is that it shall so graft its will upon those about 
it that these lesser wills shall be entirely smothered. How 
frequently has one seen just this thing happen in the case 
of a boy or girl in a homie where there is a parent with 
strong personality. The parent takes all responsibility, de- 
cides all questions in advance, and does not advise with the 
child but settles questions by command. The result is a hot- 



» 



FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 151 

house child, without initiative, without power of decision, 
without self-rehance — a dwarfed and stunted personaHty. 

If this is true in the case of a human personality pressing 
down too heavily on another human personality, the result 
of a complete and perfect divine personality pressing with 
full power on a human being would be a depersonalized be- 
ing. If God should press himself upon us, we would of 
necessity lose all our self-reliance, self-direction, initiative; 
we would be robbed of the very conditions which make it 
possible for us to develop our mental attributes. 

It is one of the marks of God's concern and care for me 
that he does thus respect my personality, that he does not 
force me to choose the right. He does not force me to fol- 
low him\. He does not even force me to know him. This is 
most remarkable in the life of Jesus Christ. He would not 
work miracles with the purpose of forcing men to believe 
in him. He only worked such miracles where they would 
help the growth of a struggling faith. This, it seems to me, 
is the very heart of the temptations of Christ. Should he 
cast himself down from the tower, or assume rulership of 
the world, and thereby make such a startling display of his 
power as literally to force men to believe in him? He de- 
liberately turned away from any such procedure, for by 
forcing faith he would have destroyed the personal lives for 
whom he had come into the world. 

There are some things which even God cannot do, if he 
is to remain righteously self-consistent — that is, if he is to 
remain God. One is, he cannot force another personality, 
however weak, for to force another is immoral, and God 
cannot lend himself to immorality. 

Who speaks of man, then, must not sever 

Man's very elements from man, 

Saying, "But all is God's" — whose plan 

Was to create man and then leave him 

Able, his own word saith, to grieve him. 

But able to glorify him too. 

As a mere machine could never do, 

That prayed or praised, all unaware 

Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer, 

Made perfect as a thing of course. 

— Brozvning's "Christmas Eve" 



152 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 

FAITH. 

"God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets 
by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these 
days spoken unto us in his Son." (Heb. i. i, 2.) 

"The lion hath roared ; who will not fear ? The Lord Jehovah hath 
spoken; who can but prophesy?" (Amos iii. 8.) 



PART 5. CAN GOD SPEAK TO MEN? 

At the University of North Carolina a senior came for an 
interview. He said he had no trouble to believe in the exist- 
ence of a personal God, but could not understand hov^ that 
God could speak to men ; in short, he could not believe the Bi- 
ble was a real revelation to men. He was a good student, a 
worker in the Young* Men's Christian Association, a mem- 
ber of the Church, and evidently honest. But he was greatly 
troubled, for if God could not speak to men in the past, he 
cannot speak to us now, and we have no way of knowing his 
will. What could be said to him ? 

First of all, it was necessary to show him that we do not 
refer to oral words when we speak of God talking to man. 
There are a great many ways of communication besides 
through written or oral words. In fact, words are, after all, 
the very weakest of expression. I may protest my love for 
you, and yet miy attitude and my actions may deny my words. 
I speak with my whole personality, not with my lips alone. 
Whatever conveys to you the impression of my soul is genu- 
ine speech, and often these impressions are too subtle for 

words 

"For words, like nature, half reveal 
And half conceal the soul within." 



FUNDAMENTALS Of THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 153 

Then I went on to show him there was no impossibility in 
the thought of God's speaking to me. This is becoming more 
and more clear in an age when we are moving out into the 
realm of new mental laws. We are getting so we are ready 
to believe that almost anything is possible in the field of men- 
tal communication, and our credulity is well founded. Psy- 
chology is making absolutely clear to us that one personality 
may in a measure communicate with another personahty 
without ever saying an audible word, provided the two are 
rightly related to each other. This being true, there can be 
no possible barrier to divide the personal God from the per- 
sonal man. 

It would be strange if I, a limited personality, can speak 
to you, and yet God, an infinite and perfect personality, can- 
not speak to you. Not only so, but if God is a person inter- 
ested in his children, it would be very strange if he did not 
speak to them. This we should certainly expect of him, 
for, as Dr. Illingworth has pointed out, "Self-communica- 
tion is of the essence of personality." 

The proof that this is possible is just the fact itself that he 
has spoken to men. Men in all times have been convinced 
that communion with God is one of the positive realities of 
life. They are just as sure of this reality as of any other 
reality of experience. Since there is no inherent impossibility 
in the thing itself, we must accept their testimony as true, 
for they have been experimenters in the realm of spirit. 
The company is large which bears testimony to a common 
experience, and they are competent witnesses. This, we 
saw in a former study, is the test of reality. 



154 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 

FAITH. 

"He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that 
loveth me : and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I 
will love him, and will manifest myself unto him." (John xiv. 21.) 

"And God created man in his own image, in the image of God 
created he him; male and female created he them." (Gen. i, 27-28.) 



PART 6. WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS OF RECEIVING 

GOD'S MESSAGE? 

But my student friend was not satisfied. If God could 
speak to men, why did he not speak to all men alike ? Why 
had God not spoken to him, since he wanted to know the 
truth? It was necessary to make clear to him the con- 
ditions on which we can hear this voice. I tried to show 
himi there are certain conditions the fulfillment of which 
alone will make it possible for me and my friend to under- 
stand each other. 

In the first place, there must be that kind and degree of 
afiBnity which makes mutual self-revelation possible. First, 
this affinity must be moral. If my companion is pure in 
soul but I am leprous, there can be no mutual self-revela- 
tion, for there is too little affinity. The best that can be 
done will be to make m^e see the long distance between us 
and perhaps start me back toward him. Thus we at once 
see that the second condition of revelation is penitence, or hu- 
mility — willingness to see the good in another and to ac- 
cept it. 

Now this mutual revelation will be a growing quantity. 
As I become more like you, you are able to show me more of 
your life, which in turn accelerates my growth of sympathy 



FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 155 

with you and also enables me to open my heart to you. So 
day by day as we grow toward each other our trust in each 
other increases, and consequently we are able the more fully 
to open our hearts one to the other. 

This, then, is the condition of coming to hear the voice of 
God. First, there must be a desire to be like God in char- 
acter. "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after 
righteousness, for they shall be filled." Then there must be 
-hat trust which opens its heart to the other. Any man who 
:omes to God with a heart yearning, who in humility at- 
tempts to find the reality of God, and who trusts God in in- 
creasing fashion, will soon find himself conscious of the im- 
pressions which God is making on his soul. If we do not 
hear God speak it is because we have not so adjusted our- 
selves to him that he can speak to us. 



156 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 

FAITH. 

"From a babe thou hast known the sacred writings which are 
able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in 
Christ Jesus. Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for 
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in 
righteousness : that the man of God may be complete, furnished com- 
pletely unto every good work." (2 Tim. iii. 15-17.) 



PART 7. WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

A STUDENT at the University of Iowa came to ask how he 
could reconcile certain statements in the Old Testament 
which seemed to him to have a comparatively low moral 
standard with the statement that the Bible is a revelation 
from God. This student represents a very large class who 
are deeply troubled over this question. 

First, of course, I asked him to forget that he had ever 
thought of verbal inspiration. A verbal inspiration would 
be absolutely useless unless God had made a provision for a 
perfect preservation of the original documents and the sta- 
tionary meaning of the original words. This had troublec^ 
him in formier years, but not then. My judgment is that 
few who study these pages will find any one troubled about 
verbal inspiration. 

Then I asked him to set aside the idea that the Bible was 
absolutely infallible. By this I meant that we are not re- 
quired to believe that no mistake can be found in the Bible. 
In order to have an infallible Bible we should have to have 
not only the infallible writers but infallible copyists and, 
what is very much more, infallible interpreters. There can 
be no absolute infallibility so long as every man interprets 
the Bible for him(self, for no man is infallible. To meet this 
difficulty the Catholic Church has set up an infallible in- 
terpreter, but most of us think that interpreter intensely fal- 
lible. "What we need," I said to my questioner, "is not an 
infallible outward standard of truth in formal words, but 
such a picture of a Loving God and a Divine Saviour that 



FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 15;^ 

men shall be able to believe in them and hence become new 
creatures. It is not necessary that every word in the Bible 
shall be rig-htly translated in order to set forth such a per- 
son." The main thing I wanted him to see was the God in 
the book, not the form of the book. 

In the third place, I tried to show him^ that the Bible is a 
progressive revelation. It grows brighter and better step 
by step. Christ said he had many things to tell his disciples, 
but they could not hear them yet. The purpose of God's 
revelation is to teach men, and you can no more begin 
teaching men final and ultimate religious truth than you can 
begin in the kindergarten teaching calculus and astronomy. 
"In other words," I said to my student friend, "God is as 
sensible as a kindergarten teacher, and begins with man 
where he finds him. Hence we cannot expect to find the 
highest and purest revelation in the Old Testament. 

The Bible is, it seems to me, the simple, beautiful record of 
the search of the hungry soul of man for the soul of God, 
and on the other side it is the strivings of the eager heart of 
God in the attempt to make himself known to men. If men 
have fallen short again and again in the attempt to find God, 
this does not make any less sacred the search. 

Or to put it a little differently, the Bible is the report of 
the great souls who have been experimenting in the field of 
God. Men in the Bible have gone to God, have tried to find 
out who he is and what is his character, and they have sim- 
ply related to us their experience. Viewed in this way the 
Bible is the most marvelous book of experience in all the 
records of the world. In it the Jewish people have shared 
with us their sense of God, and in it men have reported to 
us their experiences as they searched for him. 

The Bible therefore does not stand or fall by some theory 
of inspiration ; it has within itself its final and complete vin- 
dication. It vindicates itself because it has an advancing 
moral standard which culminates in the final principle of 
love. It vindicates itself because it increasingly reveals a 
person which finds its culmination in the complete and per- 
fect person of Jesus. It vindicates itself in that it sets forth 
the reports of men who, having accepted these standards of 
morals, have found power to live in them through this per- 
fect personality with whom they found themselves drawn 
into an ever closer fellowship. The Bible is the one unique 
book, because in it we live with men v^ho have found God, 



STUDY X. 
Helping Men Solve Difficulties about Christ. 

(159) 



l6o INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY X. HELPING MEN SOLVE DIFFICULTIES 

ABOUT CHRIST. 

"Which of you convicteth me of sin? If I say truth, why do ye 
not believe me ?" (John viii. 46.) 

"But when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the 
angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and 
before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate 
them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from 
the goats." (Matt. xxv. 31, 32.) 



PART I. CHRIST THE PERFECT MAN. 

In an earlier study I have referred to a relative of Robert 
Ingersoll v^ho came to talk about the facts of Christianity. 
It was necessary to g'o into detail with him about the person 
of Christ, and you will remember the result was that a year 
later he said he was intellectually persuaded that Christ was 
the Son of God. Here was a man who took nothing for 
granted, so what helped him may serve you in dealing with 
men who are unsettled about the person of Christ. 

First of all, I set forth to this student the fact of Christ's 
sinlessness. Morally he was the one perfect man. He was 
convinced that the nations would be judged in accordance 
with their attitude toward his person. This would be im- 
possible to any save a perfect person. But not only was 
Christ himself conscious of being without sin ; the disciples 
believed him to be so. St. Paul speaks of him as *'him who 
knew no sin." St. Paul, better than any man of his time, 
knew the thought of all Christ's disciples, and he was fully 
persuaded that Christ was a perfect man. 

The whole world has united in the verdict that he was 
sinless so far as act goes. Renan, the great French skeptic. 



SOLVING DIFFICULTIES ABOUT CHRIST, i6l 

says in his "Life of Christ:" "We must place Jesus in the 
first of this great family of the true sons of God." And 
ag^ain he says: "The palm is his, who has been powerful 
both in words and in deeds, who has discerned the good, and 
at the price of his blood has made it triumph. Jesus from 
this double point of view is without equal ; his glory remains 
entire and will ever be renewed." 

Thou seemest human and divine, 
The highest, holiest manhood thou, 

is the estimate of Tennyson. 

Sidney Lanier in his "Crystal" calls the long roll of true 
and noble men — Shakespeare, Homier, Socrates, Buddha, and 
down to Tennyson ; with each name he couples "some sweet 
forgiveness of their errors rich," but not so of Christ. Here 
Lanier adds his voice to the verdict of the world in calling 
Christ the one perfect man. 

But thee, but thee, O sovereign Seer of time. 

But thee, O poets' Poet, wisdom's Tongue, 

But thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, 

O perfect life, in perfect labor writ, 

O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest — 

What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse. 

What least defect or shadow of defect. 

What rumor tattled by an enemy. 

Of inference loose, what lack of grace 

Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, 

O what amiss may I forgive in thee, 

Jesus, good Paragon, thou crystal Christ. 

11 



l62 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY X. HELPING MEN SOLVE DIFFICULTIES 

ABOUT CHRIST. 

"At that season Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, 
Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the 
wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes; yea, Fa- 
ther, for so it was well pleasing in thy sight. All things have been 
delivered unto me of my Father : and no one knoweth the Son, save 
the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he 
to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him." (Matt. xi. 25-27.) 



PART 2. CHRIST'S CONSCIOUSNESS OF SONSHIP. 

Having set forth the perfect manhood of Jesus, my stu- 
dent friend finally said : "But even a perfect man could not 
be the center of a religion." To this I wilHngly assented, and 
went on to take the next step. Did Jesus claim to be more 
than a man ? 

As early as the age of twelve Jesus began to feel that 
stirring within his soul which made him conscious of a 
unique relationship to the Heavenly Father. This conscious- 
ness grew day by day and found expression in almost every 
discourse. The Scripture lesson for to-day sets forth clearly 
that Jesus believed himself in his relation to God to be more 
than a man. This is more strikingly represented through- 
out the Gospel of John. The conscious sonship is for Jesus 
the supreme reality of his life — it enters into his every act, 
it dominates every conception. To leave it out or ignore it 
makes his life practically unintelligible, and at the same time 
makes it impossible to explain why the disciples were so 
sure that this sense of sonship was for Jesus the supreme and 
governing reality. If there is anything of truth in history, 
we must believe that Jesus and all his followers were abso- 
lutely sure that he was uniquely related to God. 



SOLVING DIFFICULTIES ABOUT CHRIST. 163 

Growing out of this relationship, Jesus beheved that his 
mission was to make God known as a Father. God through- 
out the centuries had been attempting to reveal himself to 
men, and Jesus felt that he was the final and complete reve- 
lation. "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou 
not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father." "It is the knowledge of God," says Harnack, "that 
makes the sphere of the Divine sonship. Jesus is convinced 
that he knows God in a way in which no other one ever knew 
him before, and he knows it is his vocation to communicate 
this knowledge of God to others by word and by deed." 

The proof that he was right is found in the fact that his 
conception of God is to-day (nineteen hundred years later) 
the highest and truest conception of God that men have 
found. So far as any man can see into life, there is no ele- 
m,ent left out of Christ's picture of God which any human 
could wish to see there. A Christlike God has come to be 
the highest ideal of the human race. 

The very God! think Abib; dost thou think? 
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too — 
So, through the thunder comes a human voice, 
Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! 
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine. 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
And thou must love me, who have died for thee. 

— Browning's "An Epistle.'* 



l64 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY X. HELPING MEN SOLVE DIFFICULTIES 

ABOUT CHRIST. 

"Now Jesus stood before the governor : and the governor asked 
him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus said unto 
him, Thou sayest. And when he was accused by the chief priests 
and elders, he answered nothing. Then saith Pilate unto him, Hear- 
est thou not how many things they witness against thee? And he 
gave him no answer, not even to one word; insomuch that the gov- 
ernor marveled greatly." (M>att. xxvii. 11-14.) 



PART 3. WAS CHRIST AN IMPOSTOR, A CRAZY MAN, OR 
WHAT HE THOUGHT HIMSELF TO BE? 

But my troubled student was not yet satisfied. He asked 
if Jesus might not conceivably be an impostor, or if not, 
might he not be a crazy or deluded man ? 

To the first there v^ere two answers. If (Shrist were an 
impostor pure and simple, he would surely have recanted in 
time to save his life. Men do not play a role that brings 
death just for the sake of the role. But Christ protested to 
the end, as all Scripture references indicate, that he was the 
Son of God. Not only so, but if Christ were an impostor, we 
would at once be faced with the problem of explaining his 
character. Every student of character knows very well that 
a man's thoughts determine his moral life. A man cannot 
profess one thing and believe another without suffering the 
consequences. Hypocrisy eats like a canker at a man's soul, 
and sooner or later the hollowness of that soul shows in out- 
ward life. Victor Hugo in his "Toilers of the Sea" tells us 
that "Hypocrisy transforms and engenders its own hideous 
deformity." Everyday observation tells us this Is true. No 
life can be founded on a lie and still be beautiful. But 
Christ's life was absolutely beautiful, the most perfect the 
world has ever seen. We cannot, therefore, conceive of his 
being an impostor. Psychologically this possibility is ruled 
out. 



SOLVING DIFFICULTIES ABOUT CHRIST. 165 

"Could it not be possible that Christ was deceived?" said 
my student. Let us see. Men are mistaken about some 
things in life and still have balanced character. But are men 
who labor under an all-absorbing delusion men of poise and 
balance? We think not. When a man becomes dominated 
by a delusion which makes up his very life he becomes erratic, 
unbalanced, lacking in calmi. Buddha, though calm, lost 
his true perspective and cast to the winds the sacred ties of 
home and set forth a kind of system which no man in a 
normal life could live. Buddhism is abnormal, an abortion. 
Mohammed became mad for power. And so it goes with the 
men who have been dominated by a great delusion. But 
Christ was the calmest, the most perfectly poised, the sanest 
man the world has ever seen. At times they called him crazy, 
not because he was erratic, but because he was so un- 
selfish, so calm in the midst of turmoil, so self-possessed in 
the midst of danger, that men thought he surely could not 
understand what went on about himi. Any man who reads 
the story of the Gospels must be amazed at the serenity of a 
life cast into the midst of such unrest. This calmness does 
not betoken craziness or delusion. Neither could this pic- 
ture have been painted by any save those who had an original. 
It was too foreign to the seething, turbulent feelings of the 
Jews of his time. It must have been a true picture. 

Nor can we conceive of the splendid message Christ gave 
coming from a crazy man. We have seen in other studies 
that he gave us the final standard of morals. We have seen 
that our conception of God comes to its final consummation 
in Jesus Christ, we have seen that it has sent forth men into 
the world to live brotherly lives. Is it conceivable that the 
highest conception for all time could come from a crazy 
man ? This seems impossible. 

The only explanation is that Christ was what he claimed 
he was, the very Son of God, the complete revelation of the 
Father. 



l66 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST, 



STUDY X. HELPING MEN SOLVE DIFFICULTIES 

ABOUT CHRIST. 

"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld 
his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace 
and truth." (John i. 14.) 

PART 4. IS THE INCARNATION IDEA INCONSISTENT 

WITH REASON? 

My inquiring student admitted that all of these things said 
about Christ seemed to be logical and seemed to be substanti- 
ated by facts. But still he could not accept the idea of an in- 
carnation. 'This," he said, "is opposed to all reason ; we have 
nothing anywhere else in life corresponding to it." Is this 
really true? If it is true, then a man would be justified in 
rejecting it. Mind, I do not say we must demonstrate all we 
believe, but I do say that no man who respects his reason 
(and it is God-given) can accept any theory which cuts 
square across every pronouncement of that reason. Before 
we can finally rest, we must come to see that the thing is 
reasonable, though of course we may not be able to demon- 
strate it, for few things are demionstrable. 

So deep is this need of an incarnation bedded in human 
nature that the religious world has continued to believe in it, 
though frequently enough on insufficient grounds. Even in 
those religions whose philosophical systems deny the incar- 
nation idea the human heart has found some way to circum- 
vent the philosophies and find an incarnation in fact. This 
makes us feel that there must be something fundamental to 
human nature in the conception. 

So long as we think of nature as simply made up of raa- 
terial forces, an incarnation will seem to be a break in the 
uniform' action of those forces. But we have learned to 



SOLVING DIFFICULTIES ABOUT CHRIST. 167 

think of nature as material forces plus a divine personal will ; 
or better, we think of nature as material forces shot through 
and filled with a divine will. In other words, God dwells in 
the universe and permeates all things, and the final reality is 
not material but God. If this is granted, as I believe it must 
be, then the physical universe is simply the expression of 
God. God not only dwells in it, but through it we see God- 
What man of us who has stood on a mountain top and, look- 
ing away into the distance, seeing range on range of moun- 
tains that pile themselves together in majestic splendor, as he 
looked has not somehow felt that he was in the presence 
of god ? A deep awe steals over the soul, for God is looking 
forth in majesty from these mighty hills. Or what man of 
us has not stood and gazed at a flaming sunset and some- 
how felt that God is there? Beauty and grandeur are com- 
pletely non-utilitarian ; their one purpose seems to be to re- 
veal God. The whole of nature seemls to show forth God. 
Now this is an incarnation. This is God taking on material 
form and looking forth on men. One has well said: "The 
incarnation idea is essentially that of the unseen universe 
looking forth on us from the seen." If this be true, and the 
unseen God is daily looking forth on us from the seen uni- 
verse, there cannot be anything unreasonable in the incarna- 
tion idea. If God can look forth on us from material nature, 
is there any inherent impossibility in his looking forth on us 
from a much higher realm — that of personality ? 

The facts which we have found lead us to believe that pre- 
cisely this thing happened in the person of Jesus Christ, and 
God looks forth from that personality upon the world. 



l68 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY X. HELPING MEN SOLVE DIFFICULTIES 

ABOUT CHRIST. 

"In him was life; and the life was the light of men." (John i. 4.) 

"For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the 
Son also to have life in himself." (John v. 26.) 

"The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy : 
I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." (John 
X. 10.) 

"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life : 
no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John xiv. 6.) 

"But these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ ; 
. . . and that believing ye may have life in his name." (John xx. 
31.) 



PART 5. JESUS'S CONSCIOUSNESS AS THE 
GIVER OF LIFE. 

Having seen who Jesus was, and having made ourselves 
sure that there is a reasonableness in his claim, we can now 
turn to ask what Jesus Christ thought he could do for men. 
One of the remarkable things about Christ's teaching lies in 
the fact that he clearly identifies himself with his message. 
He and his message are one That is, he not only comes to re- 
veal God, but he says that in him is the God life. He not 
only comes to reveal truth, but he is the truth. 

No other religions can show any analogy to this. If Mo- 
hamimed did not live, that makes no difference now, for the 
system' does exist ; but if Christ did not live we have no Chris- 
tianity, for he and the message are one. Mohammedanism is 
the religion of a book ; Christianity is the religion of a per- 
son. When Gautama the Buddha was nearing death he 
said to his followers : ^'Whosoever shall adhere unweariedly 
to the law and discipline, he shall cross the ocean of life and 
make an end of sorrow." When Jesus Christ was ready to 
ascend he said nothing of the law, but "Lo, I am with you 
always, even unto the end of the world." There is a vast 
difference here. "In him was life," full and abundant. He 
felt sure, therefore, that he could pass that life on to men. 



SOLVING DIFFICULTIES ABOUT CHRIST. 169 

The scientific student goes into the laboratory, and, taking 
his formula, tests it to see if it gives the proper results. If 
he follows the conditions laid down, he gets the results. An- 
other man, who tries the same formula but does not follow 
the conditions in full, fails to get the results. He allows an 
error to slip in — some precipitate or acid or what not. But 
if every man who meets the conditions of the formula finds 
the same results, we say the formula is correct. 

The men who have met Christ's conditions, have taken 
him at his word, have acted as he asked them to act, have 
always found him to be the life giver. The fact that some 
men may have halfway followed directions and failed to find 
life does not discredit Christ's claim. The test of reality is 
broad experience, and experience proves that Christ can do 
what he claimed — give life to them. 

Christ, then, is not simply a perfect man who lived and 
died nearly two thousand years ago. If that were all, we 
could not be sure that we would not outgrow him. He is 
life and the life giver. He is the inspirer and imparter of the 
highest and holiest life we know, and hence cannot be out- 
grown. He is final and unsurpassable not alone because he 
presented the truest ideals, but because he alone can impart 
to us the life which appropriates these ideals. Our spiritual 
growth will not be beyond him,, but more completely into 
hirrf. 

If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of men 

Mere man, the first and best but nothing more — 

Account him, for reward of what he was. 

Now and forever, wretchedest of all. 

For see; himself conceived of life as love, 

Conceived of love as what must enter in, 

Fill up, make one with his each soul he loved. 

• ••90004* 

See if, for every finger of thy hands, 

There be not found that day the world shall end. 

Hundreds of souls each holding by Christ's word 

That he will grow incorporate with all, 

With me as Pamphylax, with him as John, 

Groom for each bride. Can a mere man do this ? 

Yet Christ saith, this he lived and died to do. 

Call Christ, then, the illimitable God, 

Or lost ! — Browning's "A Death in the Desert." 

Personal Thought: Have you ever given yourself over com- 
pletely to this life-giving person, so that he could fill you 
with his own life? 



I^o INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY X. HELPING MEN SOLVE DIFFICULTIES 

ABOUT CHRIST. 

For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, 
that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all, that 
they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him 
who for their sakes died and rose again. . . . Wherefore, if any 
man is in Christ, he is a new creature : the old things are passed away; 
behold, they are become new." (2 Cor. v. 14, 15, 17.) 

"But they that wait for Jehovah shall renew their strength ; they 
shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be 
weary; they shall walk, and not faint." (Isa. xl. 31.) 



PART 6. SHALL WE CULTIVATE THE LARGER LIFE? 

To those of us who have come to know God as a Father, 
Christ as a life giver, the Holy Spirit as a guide and com- 
forter, surely the apostle is right ; all things are become new. 
These messages have been written in the hope that they 
might give expression to sortie of the experiences which 
others have had but have not been able quite to put into 
expression. Through them I have hoped that men and wom- 
en who may study them will be impelled to go out and report 
their experiences to others in simple fashion, now that ex- 
pression for such experiences has been found. I am hoping 
that by such relating of experience others will be led to 
know Christ. 

For a moment to-day, however, I want to turn aside to 
say that your experience must be a growing one. You can- 
not live to-morrow on the experience had yesterday. Day 
by day you, must be renewing that experience. You would 
not think of trying to live for all the remaining years of 
your life on the friendship experience that you had last year 



SOLVING DIFFICULTIES ABOUT CHRIST. 



171 



with your. best friend. If you did you would soon enough 
wake up to find there was no friendship there. 

Now friendship takes time. As I have remarked before, 
it gains time for us ; but first of all, it costs time. If I am 
too busy to spend a few moments with you from time to 
time, I cannot hope to find my friendship growing. 

Tne danger with most of us in Christian life is that we 
are not willing to provide for the time element. Perhaps 
most who have followed these studies have again and again 
missed certain portions because time was wanting. I want 
to renew my plea for time, that three things may become a 
regular part of our lives. First, I want to plead that in our 
lives there shall be a few moments each day for the study of 
the Bible. There you will remember we said we live with 
men who have met God. This is a m'oral power in our life 
which we can ill afford to miss. Then I want to plead for a 
few moments each morning to be spent in prayer. Our 
study has helped us to see afresh that God is in his universe, 
that he is a fatherly person, that he is interested in men. 
Prayer does effect something, for all these elements are here 
given to make it effective. Lastly, I want to make a plea for 
tim'e to be given to Christian work. This is essential, if we 
are to giow in fellowship with God. He that waiteth upon 
Jehovah shall surely renew his strength. 



172 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 



STUDY X. HELPING MEN SOLVE DIFFICULTIES 

ABOUT CHRIST. 

"Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? 

Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which 

is brought upon me, 
Wherewith Jehovah hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce 

anger. . . . 
The Lord hath set at nought all my mighty men in the midst of me ; 
He hath called a solemn assembly against me to crush my young men : 
The Lord hath trodden as in a winepress the virgin daughter of 

Judah." (Lam. i. 12, 15.) 



PART 7. SUMMARY. 

I TRUST we have seen in these studies that Christian life is 
not something abnormal, but completely normal. It is just 
our everyday powers and capacities reaching out toward 
God. It is friendship pure and simple, with one person in 
that friendship a perfect and complete personality. This at 
once makes religion the most natural of all our relationships, 
and at the same time dignifies it by putting it in the place of 
supremacy. 

In the second place, I trust we have found that something 
actually does happen when a man becomes a Christian. It 
is not simply a name ; it is a life. New forces have been set 
up within a man which make Hfe new and wonderfully 
beautiful. For all of this I trust we have found adequate 
causes in Christ the Redeemer of men. 

In the third place, I trust we have come a little more clear- 
ly to see the need of men for religion. If it mlakes such a 
difference, if men are lost, and Christ is able to bring them 
back to life, surely here is a call for heroic service. 

In the fourth place, I hope we have seen that our simple 



SUMMARY. 173 

testimony is Christ's one way of spreading this kingdom. 
If men are in sin and in need, and only Jesus can help them, 
perhaps you are the one person able to bring Christ to the 
attention of some of those men. It is the chance an angel 
would greatly covet. Will you not this day covenant with 
yourself that in all your future days you will pass on this 
life-giving message? 

The author of Lamentations stood looking out over the 
ruined city of Jerusalem. Her fair daughters had been 
taken away, and her strong sons had been slain. Men and 
women were coming and going, all unmindful of the broken 
walls and the dashed hope of the proud city of God. And 
as he saw the indifference he cried from a broken heart : "Is 
it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ?" 

The young men and women of our land are going into sin. 
Character, the most sacred thing in the world, is being 
dashed to the ground. Souls are groping in misery and sor- 
row. I fancy Jesus Christ looking down on all this waste 
and suffering and sin and crying out to you and me : "Is it 
nothing to you, all ye that pass by ; behold and see if there be 
any sorrow like unto my sorrow which is brought upon me ?" 
Christ has given his life; will we pass that life on to lost 

mien? 

Worlds are changing, heaven beholding, 

Thou hast but one hour to fight; 
Now the blazoned cross unfolding. 

On, right onward for the right. 
O, let all the soul within you 

For the truth's sake go abroad; 
Strike, let every nerve and sinew 

Tell on Ages, tell for God. — Cox^e. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Below will be found two sets of reference books which I have 
worked through with some care in order to give a brief word of 
comment which might guide the student in choosing. Those marked 
with an asterisk (*) are more or less technical and useful for ad- 
vanced students, such as ministers, secretaries of Young Men's 
Christian Associations, etc. 

Books on the Facts of Christian Experience. 

Beghie, Harold. — "Twice-Born Men," a clinic in regeneration. (Re- 
vell.) The study of nine cases of regeneration of a most de- 
cided type, attempting to show that religion and religion alone 
has power to regenerate such lives. It is remarkably convincing, 
and will put new zeal into the reader. 

Bowne, Borden P. — "Studies in Christianity." (Houghton-Mifflin.) 
A vital statement of the meaning of Revelation, the Incarnation, 
and the present growth of the Christian ideal. 

Coe, George A. — "The Spiritual Life." (Eaton & Mains.) A very 
suggestive study of forces which make for moral and religious 
life. It is both scientific and inspirational. 

"The Religion of a Mature Mind." (Revell.) A bold but construc- 
tive study of present-day religious problems, such as "Authority 
in Religion," "The Christ of Personal Experience," etc. 

Clark, William Newton. — "Can I Believe in God the Father?" 
(Scribner's.) The most convincing statement, in small compass, 
that I know. Every Christian worker should read it. 

Clark, Henry W. — "The Philosophy of Christian Experience." (Re- 
vell.) His chapters on "Conversion," "Repentance," "Christ the 
Life-Giver," and "Faith" are exceedingly suggestive. They give 
a reasonable basis for religious life. 

"^Inge, William i?.— "Faith and Its Psychology." (Scribner's.) Just 
what the title indicates — a most scholarly and careful investi- 
gation of the basis and the development of faith. Genuinely 
constructive and helpful to advanced students. 

Jackson, George. — "The Fact of Conversion." (Revell.) Setting 
forth the present-day reality, the varieties of form, and the psy- 
chological working of conversion. Very readable and stimulating. 

(174) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



175 



* James, William. — "Varieties of Religious Experience." (Long- 
mans.) Dealing with a vast amount of evidence on the reality 
but variety of religious experience. It throws much light on the 
psychological working of sin and the Spirit of God. It will re- 
pay careful study. 

*Knox, George William. — "The Direct and Fundamental Proofs 
of the Christian Religion." (Scribner's.) Setting forth the finality 
of the Christian religion, with Introducing chapters on the test of 
reality, etc. Very concise and satisfying. 

Keedy, Edward Everett. — "The Naturalness of Christian Life." 
(Putnam's.) Simple, practical, suggestive. 

*Rashdall, Rev. Hastings. — "Philosophy and Religion." (Scrib- 
ner's.) "Aids to educated men desirous of thinking out for them- 
selves a reasonable basis for personal religion." This sentence 
from the Preface finds adequate fulfillment In the book. 

*Starbuck, Edwin Diller. — "The Psychology of Religion." (Scrib- 
ner's.) Better named "The Psychology of Conversion." A 
most painstaking Investigation, but based on somewhat Insufficient 
evidence. One feels amply repaid for its study, though one does^ 
not always accept its conclusions. 

Books on Practical Methods of Personal Work. 

Bosworth, Edward I. — "Studies in the Teachings of Jesus and His 
Apostles." (Y. M. C. A. Press.) The most thorough and fun- 
damental study of Christ's method and message that I know. 
To it many students are indebted more than to any other one book 
outside the Bible for their conception of Christ's message. Ar- 
ranged in daily studies. No Christian worker can afford to miss 
the study of this book. Price, 75 cents. 

"Studies in the Life of Jesus Christ." (Y. M. C. A. Press.) An 
orderly arrangement of the life of Christ in daily studies. Schol- 
arly, biblical, deeply spiritual, the best course of Bible study on 
the topic to be had. 

Gordon, S. D. — "Quiet Talks on Personal Problems." (Revell.) 

"Quiet Talks on Service." (Y. M. C. A. Press.) 

Hicks, Harry Wade. — "A Memorial of Horace William Rose." 
(Y. M. C. A. Press.) A stimulating biography of a real personal 
worker. 

H olden, Stuart. — "The Price of Power." (Revell.) Attempting to 
set forth the secret of power in service. 



176 INTRODUCING MEN TO CHRIST. 

Johnstone, Howard Agnew. — "Studies in God's Mfethods of Train- 
ing Workers." (Y. M'. C A. Press.) Daily studies of Bible 
characters as they are used by God in extending his kingdom. 

"Studies for Personal Workers." (Y. M. C. A. Press.) Daily 
studies of types and methods of personal work. 

Jowett, J. //.—"The Passion for Souls." (Y. M. C. A. Press.) 
Inspirational, impelling to work. 

Lamb, M. T.— "Won by One." (F. M. Barton & Co.) Setting forth 
the imperative need of personal work. 

McConaughy, James. — "Christ Among Men." (Y. M. C. A. Press.) 
Illustrations of personal work on the part of Christ. 

Stone, John Timothy. — "Recruiting for Christ." (Revell.) 

Say ford, S. M— "Personal Work." (Y. M. C. A. Press.) 

Trumbull, H. C/ay.— "Individual Work for Individuals." (Y. M. C. 

A. Press.) A collection of instances of personal work on the 

part of Dr. Trumbull. It is highly inspirational, and should be 

read by all Christian workers. 
"How to Deal with Doubts and Doubters." (Y. M. C. A. Press.) 
Trumbull, Charles G.— "Taking Men Alive." (Y. M. C. A. Press.) 

Daily studies based on "Individual Work for Individuals." 

Torrey, R. A.— "Row to Bring Men to Christ." (Revell.) 
Wood, H. ^.—"Winning Mjen One by One." (S. S. Times Co.) 



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